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THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
IN CONNECTICUT

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The Underground Railroad
in Connecticut

By HORATIO T. STROTHER

Wesley an University Press: middletown, Connecticut

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Copyright © 1962 by Wesley an University

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62—15122

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FIRST PRINTING OCTOBER 1962, SECOND PRINTING OCTOBER 1969

TO THE MEMORY OF

David Louis

MY SON

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CONTENTS

Preface ix

Introduction 3

1. Blazing the Trail 10

2. Thorny Is the Pathway 25

3. Fugitives in Flight 43

4. The Captives of the Amistad 65

5. A House Divided 82

6. "This Pretended Law We Cannot Obey" 93

7. New Haven, Gateway from the Sea 107

8. West Connecticut Trunk Lines 119

9. East Connecticut Locals 128

10. Valley Line to Hartford 137

11. Middletown, a Way Station 150

12. Farmington, the Grand Central Station 163

13. The Road in Full Swing 175

A ppendices

1. Narrative of Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins of

Waterford, Connecticut 191

2. Underground Railroad Agents in Connecticut 210

3. Slaves and Free Negroes in Connecticut,

1639-1860 212

4. Antislavery Societies in Connecticut, 1837 213

5. Slaves in Connecticut, 1830 216
Notes 219
Bibliography 239
Index 253

ILLUSTRATIONS

facing page

Four Antislavery Leaders 70

Cinque. The portrait by Nathaniel Jocelyn 71

Four Underground Agents 86

Two Underground Stations 87

Principal Underground Routes in the Northeast 118

Underground Railroad Routes in Connecticut 119

The Reverend James W. C. Pennington 134

The home of Francis Gillette in Bloomfield 135

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PREFACE

It has been said that we shall never know the events of
the past as they actually occurred. And it is true that
the historian, writing from a position more or less distant
in time and viewpoint from the happenings that concern
him, can hardly know his materials as his more or less dis-
tant forebears knew them. Nonetheless he must do his best,
bearing in mind a maxim of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal
sense." Such is the task of the historian in resurrecting and
presenting the missing links of the Underground Railroad.
Even at the height of its operations, the work of this
"railroad" in Connecticut was shrouded in obscurity ; and
so it has remained. Detailed contemporary records have
not survived ; indeed they can hardly have existed, for the
entire movement arose, nourished, and came to its end as
an extralegal and even a downright illegal enterprise. A
few of its passengers and operators wrote some of what
they remembered, then or later, in the form of memoirs,
diaries, or letters that are still in existence. Contemporary
newspapers and periodicals supply some data, often less
explicit than one could wish. Family and local legend,
passed verbally down through the generations since the era
before the Civil War, add a modicum of information and
an understanding of contemporary viewpoints.

For leads of these sorts, for many facts and recollec-
tions, the writer is indebted to a great number of kind peo-

PREFACE

pie, who labored conscientiously to help him gather infor-
mation. It would be impossible to name them all here. But a
special word of thanks must be tendered to Wilbur H. Sie-
bert, of Ohio State University ; the material he furnished
has given this book its heart. To Cedric L. Robinson, Rod-
erick B. Jones, Mrs. Mabel A. Newell, Mrs. Stowell
Rounds, Beaufort R. L. Newsom, Mrs. Alfred H. Terry,
Mrs. Charles Perkins, Mrs. Harold S. Burr, Mrs. Warren
N. Drum, Miss Felicie Terry, Mrs. Lillian L. Clarke, Mrs.
Alice Weaver, Henry Sill Baldwin, Benjamin L. Doug-
las, Mrs. Louise Kingsley, Miss Fedora Ferraresso, Mrs.
Madeline Edgerton, and Miss Virginia Skinner, who
helped the writer gather the fruits of research, goes his
deepest gratitude.

He is indebted, too, to many hard workers at the Yale
University Library, the Connecticut State Library, the
Springfield City Library, and the Schomburg Library in
New York City — and especially to Miss Gertrude M. Mc-
Kenna of the Olin Library, Wesleyan University. Their
generous cooperation has made his researches much easier
and more profitable. The staff of Wesleyan University
Press, by their encouragement and detailed cooperation,
did much to bring this work to its final shape. The Con-
necticut Historical Society was a fruitful source of illus-
trations.

For their wise encouragement and valued suggestions,
the writer is most thankful to Peter Schroeder and to Al-
bert E. Van Dusen, of the University of Connecticut. And
finally, to his wife Joanne, without whose constant support
this work could not have been completed, goes his highest
regard.

— Horatio T. Strother
Higganum, Connecticut
January 196%

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
IN CONNECTICUT

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INTRODUCTION

News traveled slowly in 1831, but few newspapers in
the United States failed to report with all possible
speed that a bloody slave insurrection, led by Nat Turner,
had broken out in Southampton County, Virginia. This
dramatic attack against the South's "peculiar institution"
proved in the end to be fruitless. The uprising was put
down by armed force, Turner was captured and executed,
and scores of Negroes — many of whom had taken no part
in the revolt — were murdered in savage retaliation. But
"nearly sixty whites" had died in the initial outbreak, and
a wave of terror swept through every slave-holding state.
Months earlier, in Boston, the first appearance of William
Lloyd Garrison's antislavery newspaper The Liberator
had made the South — and the nation — aware that the en-
tire institution of slavery was coming under unremitting
attack from zealous abolitionists in the North, although
how effective that attack would be was as yet unclear. Tur-
ner's rebellion was an attack of a different and more terri-
fying kind. It was too close to home, too immediate a threat
to the prosperity of King Cotton and Prince Sugar, too
dangerous to life itself, to be forgotten when it was over.

The Southern master knew that he could not rest con-
tent with the capture of Turner and his accomplices, and
that merely "a harsher and more vigilant discipline" over

INTRODUCTION

the slaves could not assure the continued acceptance of
slavery as an institution. Something more was needed, some
moral principle that would justify slavery forever, in the
eyes of all men. That something Professor Thomas Dew
attempted to supply in a declaration before the Virginia
legislature in that same crucial year : slavery was "not only
God's commanded order, not only the most humane order,
but also the most natural order." This idea, it has been
said, "proceeded to envisage the South as on its way to be-
coming a rigid caste society." x

Whether slavery was a civilizing influence or a cause of
degradation to masters and chattels alike is not a question
today. But in the middle decades of the nineteenth century
there were violent partisans on both sides, and no meeting
of minds was possible between them. It would have been
sheer folly for extreme abolitionists like Garrison or Wen-
dell Phillips to argue the point with such convinced advo-
cates of slavery as John C. Calhoun or Robert B. Rhett. It
is safe to say, at the outset, that men like these embittered
the sectional conflict that culminated in the Civil War.

For by 1831 the ideological struggle over slavery was
well under way ; and at the same time, in all the states from
the Midwest to New England, abolitionists and humanitar-
ians were developing a chain of escape routes and hiding
places for runaway slaves fleeing the South. Only a few or-
dinary citizens had even a glimpse of this activity ; those
engaged in it, in the main, knew little more than the sta-
tions and byways in their own vicinity ; even the fugitives
who escaped through these clandestine channels became fa-
miliar with only the pathways and the resting places
through which they themselves moved. Yet most people,
North and South, were aware that, despite the heavy legal
and social penalties for assisting runaway slaves, there ex-
isted a widespread, loosely knit network of hideouts and se-

INTRODUCTION

cret routes of escape; and that these were known collec-
tively as the Underground Railroad.2

That name, it is said, was first applied to the system in
1831, the year of Turner's death and The Liberator's
birth. A slave named Tice Davids escaped from his owner
in Ripley, Ohio, and immediately disappeared. The master
searched the vicinity as thoroughly as he could but found
no trace of his runaway bondsman. At length he concluded
ruefully, "He must have gotten away by an underground
road." From "road" to "railroad" was a simple transition,
especially in that time when the newly established steam
railroads were a nine days' wonder. Besides, the terminol-
ogy of railroading afforded easy names with which to
mask a range of activities that lay outside the law. So the
Underground Railroad — more the "name of a mode of
operation than the name of a corporation" — had its "con-
ductors" and "passengers," its "stations" and "station-
keepers"; but they, like its "tracks" and "trains," were
concealed from public view. They had to be; it was the
only way to be safe.3

The system, of course, had had its origins long before
1831. There had been bondsmen in the colonies since the
earliest days ; and where there were bondsmen, there were
those who sought freedom in escape. Colonial laws dating
from the 1640's are witness to this fact, and the records for
the next 150 years are dotted with instances that substan-
tiate it. To what extent these fugitives received outside
help in their flight to freedom is unknown, but it appears
that by the 1780's sentiment in favor of the runaways had
become fairly widespread, and that there were people pre-
pared to help them. In two letters written in 1786, George
Washington spoke of a runaway slave who had reached
Philadelphia, "whom a society of Quakers in the city,
formed for such purposes, have attempted to liberate";

INTRODUCTION

and again, of the "numbers who would rather facilitate the
escape of slaves than apprehend them when runaways." By
that time the sub j ect of escaped bondsmen was sufficiently
important to engage the attention of Congress, which
passed the first Fugitive Slave Law in 1793. And it is
known that underground activities of a more or less
planned sort were taking place in Philadelphia and its vi-
cinity by the first decade of the nineteenth century, where
Isaac T. Hopper was a leader in the work.4

It is not the purpose of this study to treat the Under-
ground Railroad as a whole. But it may be said in general
terms that the Railroad had no formal, over-all organiza-
tion at any time. It consisted rather of a loosely knit plexus
of individual centers, where a man or a family or a small
group stood ready to receive such fugitives as might be
sent them, to feed them and hide them as long as necessary,
and then to send or conduct them along a line of escape.
Each stationkeeper, as a rule, knew no more of the over-all
pattern than fell within his immediate range of activities.
He knew that he might receive passengers from any one of
several stations below his on the road from slavery; he
knew that he might forward them to any one of several
other stations farther along the road to freedom. How long
he entertained a passenger at his own station, and which
one he selected as the passenger's next stop, depended on
local circumstances of the moment — the state of the roads
and the weather, the known or suspected presence of slave-
hunters in the area, and so on. The decision was the Under-
grounder's own.

In carrying out his work, he made use of all the cour-
age and discretion he possessed and all the means he com-
manded or could invent. As stationkeeper, he might hide
his charges in a secret place in his house, a barn, or even a
cave in the woods or a hole in the ground. He might act

INTRODUCTION

further as a forwarding agent, letting his passengers
travel by themselves according to his directions or turning
them over to a conductor. He might himself be the conduc-
tor, taking the runaways with him to the next stop — on
foot, in a carriage in the guise of servants, or under the
cargo in a wagon. Hay wagons were widely used for this
purpose, and travel over highways was generally done un-
der cover of darkness ; but there was no one universal pro-
cedure. Indeed there were places and times when the Un-
derground Railroad was quite literally a railroad. Many a
fugitive was simply put aboard the steam cars, with money
to pay the fare, where under the eye of a sympathetic
trainman he might travel for many miles by the most rapid
means then available. Many others made at least part of
their journey by water, on ocean-going vessels, river
steamers, or humble canal boats. Any form of transport
that went north and was reasonably safe could be used;
and all were used, here or there, as circumstances made
possible or expedient.

The men and women who engaged in this demanding
and hazardous work came from all walks of life — farmers,
shopkeepers, artisans, teachers, physicians and lawyers,
businessmen of every sort. Many were ministers; many
more were escaped slaves who had found precarious refuge
in the North. Some, perhaps a majority, were convinced
and active abolitionists ; others seem to have been impelled
to the cause in the first instance by more purely religious
or humanitarian motives. Their total number, in any given
year or over a span of decades, remains unknown, but they
were certainly to be counted in the thousands. Few of them
had any knowledge of the system beyond their own circum-
scribed orbits, but here and there a man or woman emerged
whose activities spanned the country.

Such a one was Levi Coffin of Ohio, who was reputed to

8 INTRODUCTION

have helped more than three thousand fugitives and who in
time came to be known as "president of the Underground
Railroad." Another was the Reverend Samuel J. May,
whose range of activity at different times included eastern
Connecticut, Boston, and Central New York. Two others
of national prominence, both in the Underground Railroad
and in the abolitionist cause, were the escaped slaves Fred-
erick Douglass and the famous Harriet Tubman.

But these were the exceptions. The average Under-
grounder performed his unpaid and demanding task in
secrecy, in danger, and — except for the handful of neigh-
boring co-workers with whom he was in contact — in soli-
tude.

The system these dedicated people constructed was a
slow growth, but by the 1850's it had reached virtually na-
tion-wide proportions. Its stations and routes extended
through all the free states from the cornfields of Kansas to
the rocky harbors of New England, with tenuous fingers
stretching into the stronghold of slavery itself — the South.
Its terminals lay scattered along the line of the Great
Lakes and the country's northern border, beyond which
lay the one real refuge, the one region that put an end to
all fear of re-enslavement — Canada.

For runaways who sought permanent freedom, it had
always been Canada. As early as 1705, when the French
flag flew beyond the St. Lawrence, escaped slaves had fled
there from Albany. Under English law, which came to
Canada in 1763, slavery was permitted. But the American
Revolution soon followed; in Canadian eyes the United
States became an enemy country, and enemy property
would not readily be returned. Within twenty years there-
after slavery was ended in Canada by a series of court de-
cisions, holding that the air of this British land was "too
pure for a slave to breathe." 5

INTRODUCTION 9

This made Canada more than ever the refugees' goal,
and before the War of 1812 reached its inconclusive end,
the words "Canada" and "freedom" were used inter-
changeably by slaves in all the shanties and quarters in the
South. Men who knew what it was to be flogged by merci-
less masters, women who lived in fear of having their chas-
tity stolen by lecherous overseers, mothers and fathers who
dreaded the day when they would be torn from their fami-
lies and "sold down the river" to the rich new cotton lands
of the Mississippi Delta and East Texas, came to know
that the way north was the way to freedom. Follow the
Drinking Gourd, they said, follow the North Star; up
there were people who would see you got safely across the
border. Every month the number who made a break for
freedom grew larger, until by the time of the Civil War it
has been estimated that anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000
fugitive slaves had escaped from bondage.6 The whole
story of those who safely crossed the Mason-Dixon line will
not be told here — perhaps it will never be fully known —
but in this study it is proposed to examine in detail what
happened in a single Northeastern state.

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CHAPTER

1

BLAZING THE TRAIL

There had always been runaway bondsmen in Connect-
icut. In 1643, just four years after the first slave set
foot on the colony's soil, the Articles of Confederation be'-
tween the United Colonies of New England — Massachu-
setts, New Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven — pro-
vided that "if any servant run away from his master into
any of these confederated jurisdictions, that, in such case,
upon certificate of one magistrate in the jurisdiction of
which the said servant fled, or upon other due proof, the
said servant shall be delivered, either to his master or any
other, that pursues and brings such certificate of proof." 1
Such was Connecticut's first fugitive slave law — although
the runaways to whom it referred were likely to be white in-
dentured servants or apprentices rather than Negro slaves,
who in 1643 were a mere handful.

In 1680 the number of slaves was still only thirty. And
in the very next year, one of these became Connecticut's
first known runaway Negro. This was a certain Jack,
property of Sam Wolcott of Wethersfield. He was said to
be a shiftless slave, his master a merciless man. One day in
June, 1681, this unpleasant relationship ended; Jack ran
off and set out on a j ourney northward. Along the way he
managed to steal a gun, but it had no flint and he aban-
doned it in a woodland. Eventually he reached Springfield,

BLAZING THE TRAIL 11

Massachusetts, where his journey ended on the first of
July:

Anthony Dorcester saith that today ahout noone this
Negroe came to his house & after asking for a pipe of
Tobacco, I told him there was some on the table, he tooke
my knife & cut some & then put it in his pocket & after
he tooke down a cutlass & oifered to draw it but it com-
ing out I closed in upon him & so Bound him with the help
of my wife & daughter when he scrambling in his Pocket
I suspected he might have a knife & searching found my
knife naked in his Pocket which he would faine have got
out but I prevented him &; tooke it away. ... I com-
mitted the Negroe to Prison there to remain & be safely
secured till discharged by Authority.2

Jack apparently set an example that others were ready
to follow, for a law of 1690 provided that no Negro serv-
ant was to be ferried across any stream unless he had a cer-
tificate.3 It is obvious that even at this early date fugitives
were becoming a problem ; and at least some of them were
finding friends among Connecticut's respectable citizens.
In 1702 a mulatto slave named Abda fled from his owner,
Captain Thomas Richards of Hartford, and was secreted
by Captain Joseph Wadsworth of the same place. Some
time later, when the town constable approached him with a
writ to reclaim the fugitive, Wadsworth resisted, and the
case was brought before the governor and council for de-
cision. As a man of partly Caucasian descent, Abda filed a
countersuit against Captain Richards, asking damages of
twenty pounds sterling "for his unjust holding and detain-
ing the said Abda in his service as his bondman." But Gov-
ernor Saltonstall made short work of Abda's case and of
similar cases that might arise later. In one breath, he con-
signed "all persons born of Negro bondwomen" to slavery.
Abda was returned to his owner.4

12 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Others who went farther were likely to fare better, for
Massachusetts soon proved to be a fairly safe refuge for
Connecticut runaways. In Pittsfield, it was reported, many
became house servants for respectable families. Spring-
field, where "sympathy for the slave, fleeing from bondage,
was often manifested . . . years before the odious fugi-
tive slave law," was a special magnet.5

It must not be supposed, however, that the runaway
was automatically safe as soon as he reached Massachu-
setts. Harboring a fugitive slave, even at that period,
could be a dangerous business. In the town of Wilbraham,
for example, an elderly and honored magistrate of Hamp-
den County "suffered a serious injury in his own house, in
an ineffectual attempt to protect a colored man in his em-
ploy from being seized and dragged back to slavery in
Connecticut."6 The state legislature, too, evinced little
friendship for Negroes in general and fugitives in particu-
lar when, in 1788, it adopted a measure providing that
"Africans not subjects of Morocco or citizens of one of the
United States are to be sent out of the State." Of the per-
sons expelled under this law, twenty-one were from Con-
necticut.7 Some of these were undoubtedly freemen, since
during this period one frequently finds on record in Con-
necticut applications to selectmen to "free the master from
responsibility in case of emancipated slaves." 8

An emancipation movement struggling to be born; a
restless urge for freedom among those enslaved — these
were the twin sources from which the Underground Rail-
road arose, and both were evident in Connecticut in the
early 1770's. It was a time of ferment ; new ideas of liberty
and the rights of man were in the air. Antislavery pamph-
lets and books were beginning to appear from the pens of
such writers as John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and
Thomas Paine.9 Very soon Thomas Jefferson was to-draft
a document stating, among other things, that "all men are

BLAZING THE TRAIL 13

created equal" ; and already there were those who, in gen-
eral agreement with such views, were prepared to speak for
complete freedom and equality for Connecticut's 6500
slaves. One such was Aaron Cleveland of Norwich, hatter,
poet, legislator, "minister of the gospel and tribune of the
people," who in 1775 published an antislavery poem, and
who has been recognized as the first writer in Connecticut
"to call in question the lawfulness of slavery and to argue
against it." 10 This position was too advanced for the time,
but in the previous year the General Assembly had taken a
first halting step toward abolition in a measure providing
that "no Indian, negro, or mulatto slave shall at any time
hereafter be brought or imported into this State, by sea or
land." Thereafter, the courts were "inclined towards the
support of liberal interpretations of the antislavery
laws." lx

After the Revolution, that basic lesson in freedom, the
General Assembly moved further toward universal emanci-
pation. A law of 1784 provided that no Negro or mulatto
born in Connecticut after March 1 of that year was to be
held as a slave after reaching the age of twenty-five. This
law was soon followed by further measures in the same di-
rection. An enactment of May, 1792, gave teeth to the
1784 law by defining penalties for its violation; anyone
who removed from Connecticut a slave who was entitled to
freedom at twenty-five would be punished by "a fine of
$334, half of which should go to the plaintiff and half to
the State." The same session of the Assembly also enacted
that all slaves between the ages of twenty-five and forty-
five were entitled to freedom. A measure of 1797 took an
additional step, decreeing that no Negro or mulatto born
after August of that year should remain a slave after
reaching the age of twenty-one. But complete and final
emancipation did not come to Connecticut until 1848.

Meanwhile, the state's slaves had been busy emancipat-

14 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

ing themselves by direct action, sometimes through their
sole effort, sometimes with the help of their friends — or
their country's enemies. The British were perfectly aware
that some damage could be done the American cause by en-
couraging slaves to escape. Indeed, as early as 1768, a
New London citizen of "probity" heard three English offi-
cers agree that "if the Negroes were made freemen, they
should be sufficient to subdue those damn'd Rascals." 12 In
the general unrest and the near presence of British troops,
slaves saw a handy avenue to freedom. One is known to
have escaped from his owner in Colchester to the enemy
lines in 1776, and in the same year three other runaways
found refuge on a British vessel in New Haven harbor.13

Of those who made the break for freedom alone,
many — unlike their Southern counterparts of later dec-
ades— seem to have helped themselves to their masters'
wardrobes or other valuable articles. Thus a fugitive from
Stamford ran off with a felt hat, a gray cut wig, a lapelled
vest, several pairs of stockings, two pairs of shoes, a small
hatchet, and a violin.14 A Hartford runaway of 1777 also
took his master's violin, presumably for his entertainment
along the way ; while the owner of another violin-stealing
fugitive shrugged off his loss with the remark that the thief
was a "miserable performer." 15

Not all the runaways in Connecticut at this time were
friendless, however. A classic example was set by citizens of
Hebron and the vicinity, when seven or eight men from
South Carolina attempted to kidnap a slave there in 1788.
There was hardly a man in the neighborhood, it is re-
ported, who failed to resist the abduction; and after a
council of war among residents of Hebron, East Haddam,
and East Hampton, the Negro was rescued and set free.16

Ten years later, in the northwest corner of the state,
citizens of Norfolk rallied with equal wholeheartedness to

BLAZING THE TRAIL

15

the support of another runaway. This was James Mars,
who in 1798 was only eight years of age. He lived in Ca-
naan, and by the provisions of the law of 1784 his legal
freedom was just seventeen years away. However, his
owner — a Mr. Thompson, a minister and a strong pro-
slavery spokesman — planned to take James and his family
to Virginia, where he would sell them to a planter. In what
was to have been his last sermon to the people of Canaan,
Thompson said that his chattels were fine slaves and would
bring him at least two thousand dollars in the Southern
market.

James' father, however, had other ideas. Though he
was only "a slave without education," yet he was a vigilant
man ; and as a father, he was naturally greatly concerned
for the welfare of his wife, his daughter, and his two sons.
He saw and heard much, kept it to himself — and planned
his family's escape. He knew there was some ill feeling be-
tween Canaan and Norfolk, so to Norfolk they would go.
Accordingly, he hitched up the parson's team in the dark
of night, put his few possessions and his family aboard the
wagon, and set out. The trip was not without incident —
among other things, they ran afoul of someone's woodpile
in the darkness — but they reached Norfolk well before
daylight. There they found refuge in Pettibone's tavern,
whose owner, like his descendants, was a friend of fugitive
slaves. He welcomed the Mars family, helped them unload,
and gave them a resting place for the balance of the night.
But the tavern obviously could not be a permanent refuge.
Of what happened next, James wrote many years later :

It was soon known in the morning that we were in Nor-
folk; the first enquiry was where will they be safe. The
place was soon found. There was a man by the name of
Phelps that had a house that was not occupied; it was
out of the way and out of sight. After breakfast, we

16 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

went to the house ; it was well located ; it needed some
cleaning and that my mother could do as well as the next
woman. . . . Days and weeks passed on and we began to
feel quite happy, hoping that the parson had gone South.

But Thompson had not gone, and after some time the
word spread that he was planning to recapture his slaves —
particularly James and his brother Joseph. Therefore a
Mr. Cady, who lived next door to Phelps, volunteered to
take the boys to a place where they would be safe. At twi-
light he led them over hills and through woods, over rocks
and fallen logs. At one point they came out on top of Burr
Mountain, in the northwest corner of the township. "We
could look down in low grounds," said James, "and see logs
that were laid for the road across the meadow; at every
flash they could be seen, but when it did not lighten, we
could not see any thing; we kept on, our pilot knew the
way." He led them down from the hills toward the center
of town, and so to the Tibbals house.

Here the boys were welcomed by "an old man, a middle
aged man and his wife and four children. . . . We had
not been there long," James continued, "before it was
thought best that my brother should be still more out of the
way, as he was about six years older than I, which made
him an object of greater search, and they were at a loss
where to send him, as he was then about fourteen years of
age." Fortunately for Joseph, a young man named Butler,
who was visiting in the neighborhood, agreed to take him
to Massachusetts.

James, meanwhile, remained with the Tibbals for "a
few days," after which he rejoined his parents and sister
at the Phelps house. But before he arrived there, Thomp-
son had come and gone; he had left James' mother with
this proposition : "If she would go to Canaan and see to his
things and pack them up for him, then if she did not want

BLAZING THE TRAIL 17

to go [to Virginia], she need not." Since this was a bar-
gain, James and his sister were obliged to return to Canaan
with their parents. Still the parson, mindful of the profits
from the Virginia auction block, was not satisfied — he
wanted Joseph. Hence he demanded that James' father
search for him and bring him back. Now was the time for
the elder Mars to act, and again he plotted to rescue his
family. With Thompson's team of horses, he slipped his
family away along the familiar route to Norfolk. Reaching
Captain Lawrence's tavern there about two in the morn-
ing, they were given lodging for the night ; then, to make
their recovery more difficult, the Captain advised them to
disperse and hide in different houses in the neighborhood.

James, at the outset, was passed to the home of an old
woman nearby. "I stopped with her a few days, with in-
structions to keep still. You may wonder why I was sent to
such a place ; most likely it was thought that she had so lit-
tle room that she would not be suspected of harboring a fu-
gitive." A man named Walter frequently stopped by "to
see how his boy did"; he told James that, if anyone else
came to the house, he "must get under the bed." After sev-
eral days of this hole-and-corner life, James was moved
again, spirited from house to house through a chain of hid-
ing places. "I was sent to Mr. Pease, well nigh Canaan,
and kept rather dark. I was there for a time, and then I
went to stay with a man by the name of Akins, and stayed
with him a few days, and went to a man by the name of
Foot, and was with him a few days." Finally, he said, "I
went to another man by the name of Akins, and was there
some time."

While James was being whisked about in this fashion,
Thompson decided to sell him and Joseph on the spot ; and
to encourage the boys to appear on the scene, he allowed
their parents to select the persons to whom they might be

18 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

sold. Thus, when they came home in September of 1798,
their new owners had been decided upon. Mr. Munger of
Norfolk agreed to pay Thompson $100 for James, while
Mr. Bingham of Salisbury undertook to pay the same for
Joseph. Had there been a well-organized underground sys-
tem in the community, this transaction might never have
materialized. At any rate, James' parents and sister were
set free, while Joseph, it is supposed, remained a slave un-
til he reached the age of twenty-five. James, on the other
hand — after the death of Mr. Munger — became a freeman
at twenty-one, married, and settled down in Norfolk for
the balance of his fruitful life.17

The help that the Mars boys received from so many in-
dividuals bespeaks a widespread sympathy for the fugitive
in the northwestern part of the state, as well as some em-
bryonic sort of organization on a local scale. Even so
prominent a citizen as Judge Tapping Reeve, the eminent
jurist and Federalist leader, was involved to some extent.
He acquired a reputation for helping runaways, and it is
said that several of them sought him out at his famous law
school in Litchfield "simply from hearing about him." 18

But there were still slaveowners in Connecticut; and
others of them than Parson Thompson were minded to dis-
pose of their chattels in the South. Some tried persuasion,
telling their slaves of the soft climate that awaited them, in
contrast to the severity of New England winters. Some
were more blunt. On the Hanchet estate, near Suffield, a
rumor spread that Master would take his Negroes South
and sell them ; and when Hanchet told them to pack their
clothes and get ready to go to Maryland, "there was a
great outburst of excitement and tears" among his eleven
slaves. As might have been expected, the day set for depar-
ture found only the oldest and the youngest on the farm.
The rest had taken flight. Hanchet was furious, and he
"spent some weeks in a most energetic effort" to recover

BLAZING THE TRAIL

19

them. As a last resort, he hired two slave-hunters from
Maryland to find them for him.

The fugitives meanwhile had split into several groups.
One, consisting of Titus and Phill, took shelter in "a sort
of cave in the side of a mountain." Another group hid in
an old dugout above Enfield Falls ; here they were found
by another colored slave named Ned, who provided them
with food and kept them informed of developments. The
two girls who made up the third group, Lize and Betty,
wandered in the woods until they became thoroughly be-
wildered and finally separated.

Lize, somehow, struggled on through a notch "near the
Rising Corners," where next morning members of the El-
dad Loomis family found her nearly exhausted. They com-
forted the weary girl and took her to their home. During
the day they concealed her in an attic; in the evenings,
they discreetly kept her out of view of any neighbors who
might come visiting.

Betty, left alone, strayed farther north over the Mas-
sachusetts border, where she encountered the Indians of
Agawam. These people had themselves been slaves; they
immediately sensed Betty's situation and made her feel at
home. Subsequently, however, the Maryland slave-hunters
picked up Betty's tracks, and at length they reached the
Indian village. One of them addressed the chief :

"Who were those colored girls that came here the other
day?" "Who say colored gal come?" "But you know
they did, and now if you will give them to us we will give
you what you ask." "How much that?" "Will ten dollars
be enough?" "No!" "How much then?" "White man
listen. Injun hunt. Injun fish. Injun fight, but no Injun
hunt blachies. White man better go home."

The slave-hunters were beaten, and they knew it; they
went back to SufSeld. Hanchet was beaten too ; he set out

20 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

for Maryland, leaving his quondam slaves to enjoy the
freedom they had won by taking it.19

How many runaways made good their escape in the
decades from 1790 to 1820 is not known, but flights were
common enough. Such advertisements as the following were
a frequent sight in many Connecticut newspapers of the
period :

Run away from me the subscriber about the 28th of
February last, a Negro Man named London, about 50
years of age, had on when he went away a strait bodied
blue coat and leather breeches, as to his other cloathing
I am not certain ; he is a middling sized fellow, speake
faint and slow, but tolerable good English, is a crafty
subtle sly fellow, and has and can pretend sickness when
well. Whoever will apprehend said Negro and bring him
to me in Hartford, or secure him in any gaol in this or
the neighbouring States and send me word so that I may
have him again, shall have 50 dollars reward and all
necessary charges paid. I also forewarn all persons from
either harboring, secreting or employing said Negro,
as they will answer the same at the peril of the law.
(1790)

Ranaway, from the Subscriber [in Greenwich] on the
ninth inst., a negro man named James, nearly 18 years of
age and about 5 feet 10 in. high : took with him at the time
a brown cloth coatee & pantaloons a light figured cotton
vest and tow cloth frock and trousers. He is marked by
a scar obliquely across the ridge of his nose and others on
his feet, particularly a large one on his left foot just
back of the small toe, occasioned by the cut of an axev
which causes it to be stiffened. All persons are hereby
cautioned not to harbor said runaway : and whoever will
give information of him so that he can be obtained by the
subscriber (to whom he is bound until he is 21 years of
age) shall be liberally rewarded. (1813)

BLAZING THE TRAIL 21

One of the last notices of this sort appeared in the Connect-
icut Courant of August 5, 1823. In it Elijah Billings of
Somers announced that a mulatto boy named William
Lewis had run away from him. Billings apparently had lit-
tle use for the lad, however, for the last words of the adver-
tisement were : "Any person who will return said boy shall
receive one cent reward and no charges paid." 20

Meanwhile, sentiment not merely in favor of runaway
slaves but against the entire institution of slavery was be-
coming manifest among Connecticut's citizens. In Glaston-
bury, Hancy Z. Smith and her five daughters originated
the first antislavery petition in the United States, circu-
lated it among their neighbors, and forwarded it to Con-
gress with forty signatures. They held frequent antislav-
ery meetings in their dooryard, where a large door
mounted on a sturdy tree stump made a platform for the
speaker. They lectured in the cause themselves and dis-
tributed abolitionist literature. As acknowledged independ-
ents, they had little to lose by their activities.21

Abolitionist sentiment was sufficiently widespread by
1790 to result in the formation of a Connecticut antislav-
ery society in that year — its resounding title was "The So-
ciety for the Promotion of Freedom, and for the Relief of
Persons Holden in Bondage." Its president was Ezra
Stiles, the theologian who had been president of Yale Col-
lege since 1778; Judge Simeon Baldwin was secretary.
Under vigorous leadership, the Society "speedily showed
great activity." On January 7, 1791, it sent off a petition
to Congress, setting forth its position and demanding ac-
tion. This document stated that, although the Society was
of recent origin, its work had "become generally extensive
through the State" and reflected the sentiments of a large
majority of citizens. "From a sober conviction of the un-
righteousness of slavery," it went on, "your petitioners

22 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

have long beheld with grief a considerable number of our
fellow-men doomed to perpetual bondage. . . . The whole
system of African slavery is unjust in its nature, impolitic
in its principles, and in its consequences ruinous to the in-
dustry and enterprise of the citizens of these States." In
conclusion, it requested that Congress should use all con-
stitutional means to prevent "the horrors of the slave-trade
. . . prohibit the citizens of the United States from carry-
ing on the trade . . . prohibit foreigners from fitting out
vessels in the United States for transporting persons from
Africa . . . and alleviate the sufferings of those who are
now in slavery, and check the further progress of this in-
human commerce." The petition met a cool reception in
Congress. It was referred to a special committee, where it
quietly died.22

Before this same society, later in the year, Jonathan
Edwards Jr. unequivocally stated the moral necessity of
immediate emancipation. "To hold a man in a state of
slavery who has a right to his liberty," he said, "is to be
every day guilty of robbing him of his liberty, or of man-
stealing, and is greater sin in the sight of God than concu-
binage or fornication. . . . Every man who cannot show
that his negro hath by his voluntary conduct forfeited his
liberty, is obliged immediately to manumit him." 23 Ed-
wards thus foreshadowed the opinion of Judge Theophilus
Harrington of Vermont, who would accept nothing less
than "a bill of sale from God Almighty" as valid proof of
one man's ownership of another.24

The next two decades produced other influential
spokesmen in the antislavery cause — men like Alexander
McLeod, George Bourne, and Thomas Branagan, who saw
in the South's "peculiar institution" nothing but immoral-
ity, barbarism, and degradation for master and slave alike.
No one of these, it is true, wrote or published in Connecti-

BLAZING THE THAIL 23

cut, but their works were circulated widely and in some
cases for many years.25

However, the time had not yet come when a majority of
Connecticut's ordinary citizens shared such views. Side by
side with sympathy for the escaping slave, and overshad-
owing it in the minds of many, was the feeling that the free
Negro was a problem. The number of slaves in the "Land
of Steady Habits" had shrunk to insignificance by 1820,
but the number of free persons of color had risen to
7844 — nearly 3 per cent of the total population — and not
a few people were disturbed by the effects this increase
might have on the state's settled ways.26 To some of these,
the idea of establishing a colony for free Negroes in west-
ern Africa appealed as a practical and not inhumane solu-
tion to a perplexing question.

The plan of colonization arose in Washington, D. C,
where men from North and South assembled in 1816 to dis-
cuss the "growing evil" of the free Negro population.
From this meeting came the simple solution: send them
back to Africa; and the American Colonization Society
was forthwith formed for that purpose.27 In the next year
the Society sent two representatives to the west coast of
Africa to investigate the possibility of establishing a Ne-
gro colony there. Both these emissaries were ministers, the
Reverend Samuel J. Mills of Connecticut and the Rever-
end Ebenezer Burgess of Massachusetts ; and both had the
honest belief that colonization would encourage emancipa-
tion. They completed their mission and recommended a
site. It was not, as things turned out, the place where the
first American asylum for free Negroes was established,
yet Mills and Burgess may be called the pioneers of the
Liberian settlement.28

The colonization movement gained ground apace. Be-
ginning in 1820, the Connecticut Colonization Society met

24 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

annually at Hartford, and auxiliaries of this group sprang
up in many sections of the state — among them, a juvenile
association formed in Middletown in 1828.29 From the very
beginning, however, the genuine friends of colored people
saw the colonization scheme as a sort of "gentleman's
agreement" between free and slave states. It was nicely cal-
culated to drain off the insurrectionary free Negroes of the
South and to strengthen the bonds of the slave system, thus
serving an economic purpose. In the North, however, colo-
nization would reduce the number of Negroes and work
against the amalgamation or equalization of races — effects
that would be primarily social.30

However good or evil the intentions of the coloniza-
tionists, one outcome of their activity was certainly to
dampen the growing ardor for abolition. At least partly as
a result of their work, the decade 1820—1830 was "a pe-
riod of general apathy and indifference on the subject of
slavery and the wrongs and needs of the colored race." 31
The colonizationists were concerned only with the free Ne-
groes, and by focusing a spotlight in that direction, they
distracted attention from the larger matter of slavery it-
self and from the increasingly unbearable plight of the
slaves. Antislavery writings became less frequent and gen-
erally milder in tone than they had been in preceding dec-
ades.32 The country as a whole — and Connecticut with it —
was lulled into a false sense of complacency by the Mis-
souri Compromise and by colonizationist propaganda. As
a leading abolitionist said later, it began to take on the ap-
pearance of a nation "slumbering in the lap of moral
death." 33

CHAPTER W

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY

In Boston, on the first day of the year 1831, that same
abolitionist issued a forthright call to action in the anti-
slavery cause. His name was William Lloyd Garrison ; and
in the initial number of his newspaper The Liberator he
stated his position in words that no man could fail to un-
derstand : x

I am aware, that many object to the severity of my lan-
guage; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as
harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On
this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write
with moderation. No ! No ! Tell a man whose house is on
fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately
rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher ; tell the
mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into
which it has fallen ; — but urge me not to use moderation
in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not
equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single
inch — and I will be heard !

Garrison was as good as his word. For three decades, in
the face of opposition at first nearly overwhelming and al-
ways formidable, he led the fight for emancipation — not
partial, not gradual, not linked to such disguised forms of
discrimination as colonization, but immediate, uncondi-

26 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

tional, and complete. The band of reformers who gathered
about his standard were idealists all, stirred by the same
zeal for human betterment that inspired the contemporary
movements for temperance and for universal popular edu-
cation. Among themselves, abolitionists might — and some-
times did — differ over strategy and tactics, but never over
the ultimate goal. To these standard-bearers, with their
crusading spirit and selfless deeds, the Underground Rail-
road owed more of its organization and effectiveness than
to any other group.

An early result of Garrison's challenge was the forma-
tion of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, established
at Boston in 1832. Within a year it had become the Ameri-
can Anti-Slavery Society and had spread over the North,
carrying Garrison's principles wherever it went. Its pur-
pose was dual : "To endeavor, by all means sanctioned by
law, to effect the abolition of slavery ; and to improve the
character and condition of the free people of color." Its
program included the following points :

1. To organize in every city, town, and village.

2. To send forth agents to preach the gospel.

3. To circularize antislavery tracts and periodicals.

4. To encourage the employment of free laborers, rather
than of slaves, by giving market preference to their
products.2

A fifth purpose, not explicitly stated but evident in the
acts of many Society members, was to encourage and assist
the escape of fugitives from slavery — the passengers of the
Underground Railroad.

Among the earliest antislavery societies in New Eng-
land was that of New Haven, established in 1833. Two of
its leading spirits were clergymen, the Reverend Samuel J.
May of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and the Reverend Sim-

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 27

eon S. Jocelyn. Their reasons for enlisting in the cause of
immediate, complete emancipation were well phrased by
May:

Often it was roughly demanded of us Abolitionists "Why
we espoused so zealously the cause of the enslaved? Why
we meddled so with the civil and domestic institutions of
the Southern States?" Our first answer always was, in
the memorable words of old Terence, "Because we are
men, . and therefore, cannot be indifferent to anything
that concerns humanity!" Liberty cannot be enjoyed nor
long preserved at the North, if slavery be tolerated at
the South.3

In the South, indeed, slavery was not merely tolerated ;
it was encouraged and was growing apace. The cotton gin,
invented as far back as 1793, was by now in widespread
use; and with it, cotton production became increasingly
profitable, so that more and more land was brought under
cultivation and more and more slaves were demanded to
work it. Moreover, the trans-Appalachian region of Ala-
bama and the Mississippi Delta had become safe for full-
scale settlement and exploitation only comparatively re-
cently, with Andrew Jackson's victory over the Creeks in
1814. After that came a rush of settlers to the newly
opened areas: — hard-driving men, intent on carving a cot-
ton empire out of the forests and canebrakes, and more
than willing to burn up any amount of slave labor in the
process. Where once the buckskin-clad hunter had roamed,
it was now the overseer and the slave coffle, the endless
rows of cotton growing through the long hot season, the
back-breaking tasks of chopping and picking, and the hu-
man beasts, ill fed, ill clothed, and ill treated, on whose
driven labors the master might wax fat. Even the planters
of the upper South, whose eighteenth-century forebears
may in fact have treated their slaves with a certain patri-

28 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

archal concern, could not fail to realize that the auction
block now offered them high profits in human flesh sold
down the river — especially since the importation of slaves
from overseas had been banned in 1807. Everywhere, the
lot of the slaves grew steadily worse, while the Southern
slaveowners — never more than a small percentage of the
white population in the slave states themselves — grew
steadily more powerful and more arrogant.4

As reports of these conditions filtered back to the
North, more and more persons of conscience came to see
that slavery could no longer be regarded as a local matter
but was becoming a national concern. This conviction fed
the rolls of the antislavery societies, which by 1837 num-
bered twenty-nine in Connecticut, with memberships rang-
ing from twelve to three hundred.5 They set about their
work with resolute purpose, often against determined op-
position.

Part of that work had to do with providing better con-
ditions for free Negroes. Two cases in Connecticut, both
arising in 1831, showed how difficult was the fight that lay
ahead.

In June of that year, at a United States convention of
colored people in Philadelphia, the Reverend Simeon S.
Jocelyn proposed the establishment, at New Haven, of "a
Collegiate school on the manual labor system" where Ne-
gro students would "cultivate habits of industry" and "ob-
tain a useful Mechanical or agricultural profession." The
school would be "established on the self supporting sys-
tem," but preliminary backing was essential to its found-
ing. The proposal was ratified by the convention, and a
committee with the Reverend S. E. Cornish as "agent" was
appointed to solicit funds. Forthwith there was issued an
"appeal to the benevolent," setting forth the difficulties
met by colored youths in gaining admission to ordinary in-

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 29

stitutions, their need for adequate preparation, and the
purpose of the proposed school to supply it.

Opposition to the plan among citizens of New Haven
was immediate. The mayor, as soon as he heard of the idea,
summoned first his Council, then a town meeting. Here, it
is reported, the "air ran hot and foul" as the plan was
heatedly discussed. Despite all the proponents could do,
the town meeting adopted resolutions fatal to the reform-
ers' hopes :

1. That it is expedient that the sentiments of our Citizens
should be expressed on these subjects, and that the call-
ing of this Meeting by the Mayor and Aldermen is warmly
approved by the citizens of this place.

2. That inasmuch as slavery does not exist in Connect-
icut, and whenever permitted in other States depends on
the Municipal Laws of the State which allows it, and over
which, neither any other State, nor the Congress of the
United States has any control, that the propagation of
sentiments favorable to the immediate emancipation of
slaves, in disregard of the civil institutions of the States
in which they belong, and as auxiliary thereto, the con-
temporaneous founding of Colleges for educating Colored
People, is an unwarrantable and dangerous interference
with the internal concerns of other States and ought to
be discouraged.

3. And Whereas in the opinion of this Meeting, Yale
College, the institutions for the education of females, and
the other schools, already existing in this City, are impor-
tant to the community and the general interests of sci-
ence, and as such have been deservedly patronized by the
public, and the establishment of a College in the same
place to educate the Colored population is incompatible
with the prosperity, if not the existence of the present
institutions of learning, and will be destructive of the best
interests of the City : and believing as we do, that if the
establishment of such a College in any part of the Coun-

30 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

try were deemed expedient, it should never be imposed
on any community without their consent, — Therefore ;
Resolved — by the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council,
and Freemen of the City of New Haven in City meeting
assembled, that we will resist the establishment of the
proposed College in this place, by every lawful means.

In face of this attitude, Jocelyn's plan was dropped.
The citizens of New Haven had plainly recorded their in-
difference to the slavery issue ; their awareness that Negro
education must lead, however slowly and indirectly, to
emancipation and racial equality ; and their wish to avoid
any offense to Southern slaveholders whose sons attended
Yale or with whom, as merchants, they had had business
dealings.6

Starting in that same year, the people of the little vil-
lage of Canterbury became involved in a somewhat similar
case that grew to command nation-wide attention. It began
in an atmosphere of general approval when Prudence
Crandall, a Quaker from nearby Plainfield, opened a
"young ladies boarding school" whose pupils included an
impressive number of daughters of "the best families in
town." 7 Everyone admired Miss Crandall; she was a lady
of all the classical virtues, her pupils became devoted to
her, parents recognized her as a teacher of great ability,
and ministers and public officials in surrounding towns rec-
ommended her school to public patronage. All was going
smoothly when Sarah Harris applied for admission to the
school.

Sarah was a pious girl of seventeen, daughter of "a re-
spectable man who owned a small farm" in the vicinity, and
she was sincerely anxious to "get a little more learning."
Everything was in Sarah's favor — except the fact that she
was a Negress.

Miss Crandall was perfectly aware of the problem she

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 31

thus had to face, and for a time she hesitated. But she had
all the sense of justice and the moral courage of her
Quaker persuasion. Her sympathies, she said later, "were
greatly aroused" ; she admitted Sarah as a day scholar. As
soon as her action was known, protests arose on every
side — mutterings, threats of withdrawal from her pupils'
parents, the direct warning from a prominent minister's
wife that, if she did not dismiss Sarah, her school would
fail. Let it fail then, returned Miss Crandall, "for I should
not turn her out." She went further than that ; she resolved
to remake her school into one exclusively for colored girls.

Local reaction was immediate. The citizens of Canter-
bury swung into action, under the leadership of Andrew T.
Judson, state senator, proslavery spokesman, and advocate
of colonization. First a town meeting was called to "avert
the impending calamity" — for, as Judson and his followers
saw it, "should the school go into operation, their sons and
daughters would be forever ruined, and property no longer
safe." Most of those present accepted this specious view,
and when Arnold Buffum and Samuel J. May attempted to
speak in Miss Crandall's behalf, they were shouted down
before they could deliver their message — which was, essen-
tially, that Miss Crandall was prepared to move her school
elsewhere if given time to do so and a fair price for her
property. But the citizens never heard that proposal ; they
were too busy resolving that "the obvious tendency of this
school would be to collect within the town of Canterbury,
large numbers of persons from other States, whose charac-
ters and habits might be various and unknown to us,
there-by rendering insecure the persons, property, and
reputation of our citizens," and that they would oppose
the school "at all hazards."

These resolutions were conveyed to Miss Crandall.
They produced no effect whatsoever. She remained peace-

32 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

ful and kind at all times, but her purpose never wavered.
She dismissed her white pupils and reopened the school to
colored girls only, with a small group of students from rel-
atively prosperous families in Boston, New York, Provi-
dence, and Philadelphia.

Thereupon she and her pupils became the targets for
the strongest sort of opposition. First, the selectmen sub-
mitted an appeal for help to the American Colonization
Society, in which they castigated the members of the
Anti-Slavery Society who, they said, "wished to admit the
Negroes into the bosom of our society" and to justify "in-
termarriages with the white people." Then the citizens, at
another town meeting, resolved that "the establishment of
the rendezvous falsely denominated a school was designed
by its pro j ectors as the theatre, as the place to promulgate
their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation, and their per-
nicious sentiments of subverting the Union."

Meanwhile the school was subjected to all kinds of
meannesses and harassments. The well was filled with stable
refuse. Stones and rotten eggs were thrown through the
windows. The village store refused to sell groceries for the
school's use. Miss Crandall's father was threatened with
mob violence and legal action when he brought her food.
She and her pupils were stoned on the streets. Doctors re-
fused to treat her when she was ill. The local authorities
dusted off an old vagrancy law and invoked it against one
of the girls, Ann Eliza Hammond. Under the terms of this
enactment, Miss Hammond had "forfeited to the town
$1.62 for each day she had remained in it, since she was
ordered to depart; and that in default of payment, she

WAS TO BE WHIPPED ON THE NAKED BODY NOT EXCEEDING

ten stripes, unless she departed within ten days after con-
viction." This brutality was avoided only when abolition-

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 33

ists of the vicinity managed to raise $10,000 to meet the
financial demands of the obsolete law.

Meanwhile, Andrew Judson introduced a so-called
"Black Law" into the General Assembly, which enacted it
in the spring of 1833. Its preamble read as follows : "At-
tempts have been made to establish literacy institutions in
this State for the instruction of colored persons belonging
to other States and countries, which would tend to the
great increase of the colored population of this State, and
thereby to the injury of the people." The act went on to
provide that "every person, who shall set up or establish]
any school, academy, or literary institution, for the in-
struction or education of colored persons who are not
inhabitants of Connecticut; or who shall teach in such
school, or who shall board any colored pupil of such school,
not an inhabitant of the State, shall forfeit one hundred
dollars for the first offence, two hundred dollars for the
second, and so on, doubling for each succeeding offence,
unless the consent of the civil authority, and selectmen of
the town, be previously obtained."

With the passage of this measure, Canterbury was tri-
umphant. Miss Crandall was arrested at once, imprisoned
overnight while May and others collected the necessary
bail, and eventually brought to trial before Judge Joseph
Eaton and a jury at Brooklyn on August 23, 1833. Jud-
son, appearing as prosecutor for the state, attacked Miss
Crandall's school as "a scheme, cunningly devised, to de-
stroy the rich inheritance left by your fathers. The pro-
fessed object is to educate the blacks, but the real object
is to make the people yield their assent by degrees, to this
universal amalgamation of the two races, and have the
African race placed on a footing of perfect equality with
the Americans." He further contended that Negroes were

34 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

not citizens of the United States within the meaning of the
Constitution, and that therefore they could not enjoy the
"privileges and immunities of white citizens." W. W. Ells-
worth, for the defense, maintained the precise opposite:
that citizenship was a matter of birth or naturalization, not
of color ; that Negroes born in this country were therefore
citizens; and that as such they were entitled to all the
privileges of citizenship, including education, "the first
and fundamental pillar on which our free institutions
rest." The jury, divided between these two points of view,
could not agree. The case then went before Judge David
Daggett of the State Supreme Court for retrial.

Daggett, a sometime professor of law at New Haven,
had been among the more active opponents of Jocelyn's
proposed Negro school there. Now, in his charge to the
jury, he categorically denied the citizenship of colored
persons : "God forbid that I should add to the degradation
of this race of men ; but I am bound to say, by my duty,
that they are not citizens." Miss Crandall was convicted.
On appeal to the Court of Errors, the verdict was set aside
on technical grounds and she went free. The constitution-
ality of Connecticut's Black Law was not called into ques-
tion.

Having thus failed to stop Miss Crandall by legal
means, the opponents of her school now had recourse to vi-
olence. First an attempt was made to set the building on
fire. Then a mob came by night and broke out every win-
dow and window frame in the place. Miss Crandall had
just been married, to the Reverend Calvin Philleo; at his
insistence, she now closed the Canterbury school perma-
nently, yielding the battle to her enemies. The battle, but
not the war ; for with her husband she removed to north-
ern Illinois, where she was engaged in the education of Ne-
groes for the rest of her active life.

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 35

The pattern of anti-Negro, anti-abolitionist violence
set in the Crandall affair was repeated on a lesser scale in
many parts of the state during the next years. In 1834 a
mob raided an abolitionist meeting at the First Presbyte-
rian Church in Norwich, drummed the parson out of town,
and threatened him with tar and feathers if he returned.
The following year saw a serious riot in Hartford, when
a group of white roughs attacked Negroes on their way
home from church.8 In Middletown, Cross Street was re-
ported to be "crowded with those worse than southern
bloodhounds." 9 In Meriden, when Reverend Henry Lud-
low came to the Congregational church to deliver an abo-
litionist lecture, an infuriated crowd stoned the building,
battered down the locked door, and pelted the congrega-
tion with rotten eggs and trash. Even in the birthplace of
John Brown, Torrington, in 1837 the organization meet-
ing of a new county abolition society was attacked by a
proslavery mob, whose members had "elevated their cour-
age with New England rum" ; blowing horns, yelling, and
beating on tin pans and kettles, they surrounded the un-
heated barn where the meeting was held and broke up the
gathering "by brute force." 10 Outbreaks of similar nature
were reported during the 1830's in other towns as well —
New Haven, New Canaan, and Norwalk among them.11

Most of these outrages appear to have been of more or
less spontaneous nature — a matter of a few ringleaders
surrounding themselves with a hastily gathered group of
roughs who perhaps cared little about slavery one way or
the other but who, warmed by liquor and hot words, were
easy prey to the mob spirit and not at all averse to throw-
ing eggs, destroying property, and pushing people
around. The Danbury riots, however, bespoke greater pur-
pose and more careful organization. Danbury was already
a center for hat manufacturing, and the Southern trade

36 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

had been important to it at least since 1800; indeed it was
said to have "gained its growth largely by developing the
Southern market." Many of its citizens, therefore, sympa-
thized with Southern views and had no patience with abo-
litionists. To this town, in 1837, came an itinerant anti-
slavery lecturer, the Reverend Nathaniel Colver, who was
scheduled to speak at the Baptist church. When the hour
arrived for him to do so, a blast of trumpets was heard
from near the courthouse ; then immediately men charged
into the streets from every direction, arranged themselves
in military formation, and marched like an infantry regi-
ment to the church. The congregation scattered at once;
some of its members, along with two constables, hurried
Colver to a private house. The rabble churned around out-
side for a while but finally dispersed. Colver was not easily
scared off, however. He returned to the church, determined
to deliver his message. Now the mob's action was decisive ;
masked men blew up the building with gunpowder.12

Behind all these rowdy demonstrations, perhaps not
condoning their violence and lawlessness but certainly
sharing the same attitude toward abolitionists, there was
a large segment of Connecticut's most respectable citi-
zens. One abolitionist paper went so far as to say that the
troubles around Norwalk were sparked by "ministers, mag-
istrates, lawyers, doctors, merchants and hatters." 13 Un-
doubtedly there were many ordinary persons who agreed
with Mrs. Frances Breckenridge of Meriden: "Some of
the sympathy for the slave might as well be given to the
owner. Let any Northern housekeeper select the most idle,
insolent, thievish and exasperating servant she ever knew
or heard of and multiply by a dozen or two and she will
have a faint idea of one of the trials of the Southern house-
keeper." 14 Or with the two men who, having worked on a
Southern plantation where there Were slaves, came back to

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 37

report that they "didn't think niggers wuz fit fer enny-
thin but ter be made ter wuk fer white folks." 15

All during the decade, indeed, the Connecticut Colo-
nization Society continued to preach its gospel of salva-
tion-through-separation. One of its leading spokesmen
was Willbur Fisk, president of the newly established Wes-
leyan University in Middletown, who declared in 1835 :

African Colonization is predicated on the principle that
there is an utter aversion in the public mind, to an amal-
gamation and equalization of the two races ; and that any
attempt to press such equalization is not only fruitless,
but injurious. . . . Hence this society lifts up the man
of color, at once from his connections and disabilities ;
and places him beyond the influence of the shackles of
prejudice.16

Other colonizationists set forth the view that no good
would befall the escaped slave in Canada, that Africa was
his only hope. As one of them phrased it :

A few months since I was traveling near to Canada, and
desiring to see the result of freedom, as they found it in
their northern flight, with their eyes fixed on the pole
star ... I inquired about them, and I found that when
they first came there they were docile and full of hope, but
soon their appearances changed, they lost their buoyancy
of spirits, — became indolent, unwilling to submit to the
restraints of society which the whites submit to, and as
a necessary consequence, a large number of them were in
the penitentiary, and others are in the greatest state of
want and wretchedness. . . . There is no advantage
gained by going to Canada. Go and sit with the colored
man, and ask him where do you find your best friends?
And he will tell you among the colonizationists.17

But the free Negroes of Connecticut were saying no
such thing. Hartford's colored inhabitants adopted a res-

38 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

olution that the Colonization Society was "actuated by
the same motives which influenced the Pharaoh when he
demanded that the male children of Israel be destroyed."
Those of New Haven declared that they would "resist all
attempts made for their removal to the torrid shores of
Africa, and would sooner suffer every drop of blood to be
taken from their veins than submit to such unrighteous
treatment by colonizationists." 18 From the free Negroes
of Lyme came "the sincere opinion that the Colonization
Society was one of the wildest projects ever patronized by
enlightened men." From Middletown, where Joseph Gil-
bert and Jehiel Beman were among Negro leaders, came
the question: "Why should we leave this land, so dearly
bought by the blood, groans and tears of our fathers?
Truly this is our home, here let us live and here let us
die." 19

That most Connecticut Negroes shared such views is
evident. In twenty years, from 1830 to 1850, only ten Ne-
groes altogether sailed from Connecticut ports to Liberia
— approximately one per eight hundred of population. It
is possible that others sailed from ports in other states, but
the total cannot have been great, for the number of emi-
grants sent to Africa by the Colonization Society from the
entire country amounted to less than ten thousand in all
the years from 1820 to 1857. 20 In Negro eyes, the answer
to the slavery problem remained what it had been : in the
long run, abolition and equality; in the immediate mo-
ment, escape to free soil, preferably to Canada.

Despite all the violence and the legal penalties, there
were citizens willing to help runaway slaves in any way
they could. The Underground Railroad was now taking
definite shape, and not even Connecticut's own fugitive
slave law of 1835 could stop it. This measure, supplement-
ing the federal law of 1793, provided that "no person held

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 39

to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, es-
caping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or la-
bor ; but shall be delivered up, on the claim of the party to
whom such service or labor may be due." The fugitives
who succeeded in reaching the Nutmeg State could look
for no official help in their quest for freedom.21

But they could look for direct and immediate aid from
dedicated abolitionists like Samuel J. May, who later
stated that he had begun receiving fugitives "addressed to
my care" at Brooklyn as early as 1834 ; and that he
"helped them on to that excellent man, Effingham L. Ca-
pron, in Uxbridge, afterwards in Worcester, and he for-
warded them to secure retreats." 22 They could look, too,
to a climate of opinion that was slowly shifting in their
favor. Under the impetus of William Lloyd Garrison and
his Liberator, antislavery speakers were increasingly ac-
tive, and abolitionist publications were growing in num-
bers, circulation, and influence. Books like Theodore
Weld's anthology American Slavery As It Is had nation-
wide impact.23 Connecticut had its own antislavery periodi-
cals, too — the Christian Freeman, published in Hartford
from 1836 onward, and the Charter Oak, founded in 1838.
There was also one issued at New London, the Slave's Cry.
Their circulations were limited, yet the Chafter Oak's
3000 subscribers in 1839 compared favorably with the ap-
proximately 55XM)™readers enjoyed by the Connecticut
C our ant, a leading general newspaper, in the same era.24
It was estimated that by this time "the number of anti-
slavery publications reached a total, of over a million." 25
Much of the abolitionist writing was in the form of tracts,
issued by the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which
played up the barbarous treatment of slaves by quoting
advertisements from Southern newspapers :

40 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Ranaway, a negro woman and two children ; a few days
before she went off, I burnt her face, I tried to make the
letter M.

Ranaway a negro man named Henry, his left eye out,
some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and
much scarred with the whip.

Ranaway a negro named Arthur, has a considerable scar
across his breast and each arm, made by a knife; loves
to talk much of the goodness of God.

Ranaway a negro girl called Mary, has a small scar over
her eye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A. is
branded on her cheek and forehead.

Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward, he has a
scar in the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under
his arm, and the letter E. on his arm.26

Just how much influence such publications had in
arousing public sympathy for the slave it would be im-
possible to determine, but it was sufficient to stir the ire of
the Southern slavocracy. A meeting in Charleston, South
Carolina, adopted resolutions against the "incendiary lit-
erature" of Northern abolitionists and mailed copies to
"each incorporated city and town in the United States." 27
In Hartford and in New Haven, these Charleston resolu-
tions were supported by mass meetings of proslavery citi-
zens, who further resolved that abolitionists in Connecti-
cut and elsewhere had "no authority to interfere in the
emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in dif-
ferent states." 28

None the less, the abolitionist propaganda made itself
felt in many groups, not least the General Assembly. In
1838, that body repealed the notorious Black Law that
had struck down Prudence Crandall's school ; and it did so
at the insistence of one of the measure's original backers,

THORNY IS THE PATHWAY 41

Phillip Pearl, who had been converted to the antislavery
cause by Theodore Weld. "I could weep tears of blood for
the part I took in that matter," Pearl said. "I now regard
the law as utterly abominable." 29

In that same year the Assembly took an even more im-
portant step in the direction of freedom by enacting one of
the most detailed personal liberty laws in the union. This
measure, while not extending automatic emancipation to
runaways who reached Connecticut, severely limited the ac-
tivities of slave-hunters by providing that "no officer, or
other person can remove out of the State any fugitive
slave under the laws of any other state in the Union" ex-
cept in accordance with the following:

1. The claimant must fill out an affidavit, setting forth
minutely the grounds for claiming the fugitive, "the time
of his or her escape, and where he or she then is, or is
believed to be."

2. The claimant must obtain a writ of habeas corpus or
a writ to bring the alleged fugitive to court, where the
fugitive would be tried by a jury of twelve men, none of
whom would be an abolitionist.

3. The claimant must pay in advance all fees and ex-
penses of the proceeding ; and if the alleged fugitive were
acquitted, the claimant must pay to him "all damages and
costs" determined by court or jury.

4. If the alleged fugitive were found to be in fact the
claimant's legal property, then the claimant must remove
him from the state with all due haste by "direct route to
the place of residence of such claimant." 30

Not everyone in the state was pleased by this enact-
ment. The influential Columbian Register of New Haven,
for instance, inveighed against it:

If we put severe penalties upon those who attempt to
enforce the laws of the Union, which secured to them

42 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

their labor, the}' can put as severe or severer penalties
on those who attempt to enforce within their limits the
tariff laws, which secure to us our labor. Are the north-
ern manufacturers ready for this? . . . Why then has
the negro Act been selected in preference to the others,
for this special legislation? But one answer can be given.
The New England Anti-Slavery Society recently voted
that southern slave holders are thieves and robbers.31

The law nevertheless reflected a growing concern for jus-
tice to the Negro who might or might not be a runaway
slave ; it demanded legal proof of his status, and it called
for a fair trial of the accused fugitive before a jury. It
thus helped to focus public attention on the victims of
slavery.

By this time, the victims themselves had been escap-
ing to and through Connecticut for four decades in a con-
stantly increasing stream.

ass5H5H5EEr2Has*dsa5i5i5asE5asEsrH5ansasasz5a5HsrEsa5HSB5a5E5asas

CHAPTE

*3

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT

Among the first runaways from the South to reach
Connecticut was William Grimes. He came into the
state on his own two feet, with little guidance from others,
for at this early date — just after 1800 — the Underground
Railroad as even a quasi-organized entity was still years in
the future. Yet he had started on his j ourney north to free-
dom with the complicity of some Yankee sailors and even a
couple of men in positions of authority. According to the
account of his life that he wrote in later years, it happened
in this fashion : x

Grimes was a mulatto slave in Savannah when his
owner decided to go to Bermuda, leaving the bondsman be-
hind "to work for what he could get." The brig Casket,
out of Boston, lay in the harbor taking on a cargo of cot-
ton for New York; Grimes saw a chance to make "a few
dollars" by helping with the loading. While engaged in
this work, he became friendly with some of the seamen. As
they laid up the bales on deck, they left space between
where a man might lie hidden. "Whether they then had
any idea of my coming away with them or not, I cannot
say," wrote Grimes, "but this I can say safely, a place was
left." He slipped ashore in the evening with a colored sea-
man to buy some "bread and dried beef" for the journey;
then he lay low among the cotton bales while the brig

44 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

edged slowly out of the harbor. As it passed the lighthouse,
"the sailors gave three hearty cheers" and Grimes realized
he was on the way to being a free man.
The voyage itself was uneventful :

During my passage, I lay concealed as much as possible ;
some evenings, I would crawl out and go and lie down
with the sailors on deck ; the night being dark, the captain
could not distinguish me from the hands, having a number
on board of different complexions. . . . When there was
something to be done some one would come on deck and
call forward, "there, boys !" "Aye, aye, sir," was the
reply ; then they would be immediately at their posts,
I remaining on the floor not perceived by them.

There was a tense moment for Grimes, however, as the
brig neared the quarantine station in New York Harbor.
Standing in the forecastle, he felt hopeful as he saw the
dark outline of the city becoming clearer through the sea
mist. But when the captain approached and questioned
him about his status aboard, he just stood there, wordless
and tense. "Poor fellow, he stole aboard," said the captain
with a knowing stare. And he gave orders that Grimes was
to be put ashore safely.

Another tense moment awaited him as, accompanied by
a Negro sailor, he was herded toward a line of seamen who
were being examined by a doctor on the wharf. Then, he
confessed, "I felt as if my heart were in my mouth, or in
other words, very much afraid that I should be compelled
to give my name, together with an account of where I
came from, and where I was going and in what manner I
came there." But his guide stepped up and spoke quietly
to the doctor, who simply gave the order "Push off."
Grimes "rejoiced heartily," thanking his companion a
number of times before they parted.

Now he was on his own in a crowded, friendless city.

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT

New York was dangerous too for men in Grimes' position,
for among its colored population were some who "for a
few dollars" would betray fugitives to Southern slave-
catchers.2 Not knowing of this peril, he approached a col-
ored girl and asked her to "walk with him a little ways, in
order to see the town," explaining that he was "a stranger
there, and was afraid of being lost." So they walked "for
some time," after which he found a lodging for the night.

Grimes did not feel comfortable in New York, however.
Early the next morning he bought "a loaf of bread and a
small piece of meat" and set out on foot toward the north-
east, with no particular destination in mind. Trudging
mile after mile over dirt roads, he crossed the Connecticut
line at Greenwich. At first he fancied he was pursued by
every "carriage or person" behind him; often he ducked
off the road to lie down until those in the rear had passed.
But soon he realized that his money would not carry him
far, and he resolved to be more temperate, more prudent,
and more courageous. Thus he persuaded a teamster to
give him a ride for a short distance, and he bought some
apples from a couple of boys he met on the road. At length,
with j ust seventy-five cents in his pocket, he reached New
Haven, where he paid for one night's lodging in a board-
ing house "kept by a certain Mrs. W."

Now he needed work, and he found it the very next day
with Abel Lanson, who kept a livery stable. "He set me to
work in a ledge of rocks," wrote Grimes, "getting out stone
for buildings. This I found to be the hardest work I had
ever done, and began to repent that I had ever come away
from Savannah to this hard cold country. After I had
worked at this for about three months, I got employment
taking care of a sick person, who called his name Carr,
who had been a servant to Judge Clay, of Kentucky; he
was then driving for Mr. Lanson."

46 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

This job ended suddenly when Grimes was recognized
by a friend of his master, who was apparently visiting in
New Haven. The fugitive's first thought was to "inform
his friends" ; his second, to leave town. He went to South-
ington, where he stayed a few weeks picking apples on
Captain Potter's farm ; then back to New Haven ; to Nor-
wich, where he worked as a barber for Christopher Starr ;
to New London; and to Stonington, where he had been
told that a barber might do well.

But Grimes found it difficult to make a living in east-
ern Connecticut, so he returned to New Haven. There he
found work at Yale College, shaving, barbering, "waiting
on the scholars in their rooms," and doing odd jobs for
other employers on the side. Six or eight months later he
heard that a barber was needed at the Litchfield Law
School — Tapping Reeve's famous establishment — and
there he went in the year 1808. He became a general serv-
ant to the students and was also active as a barber, earning
fifty or sixty dollars per month. "For some time," he said,
"I made money very fast ; but at length, trading horses a
number of times, the horse jockies would cheat me, and to
get restitution, I was compelled to sue them; I would
sometimes win the case ; but the lawyers alone would reap
the benefit of it. At other times, I lost my case, fiddle and
all, besides paying my attorney. . . . Let it not be imag-
ined that the poor and friendless are entirely free from
oppression where slavery does not exist; this would be
fully illustrated if I should give all the particulars of my
life, since I have been in Connecticut."

Back in New Haven in the year 1812 or 1813, Grimes
met and soon married Clarissa Caesar, a colored girl whom
he called "the lovely and all accomplished." She was also a
"lady of education," teaching him all the reading and writ-
ing he ever knew. Because his situation was not entirely

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 47

safe — he was still a runaway slave and still, before the
law, his master's property — Grimes and his bride returned
to "the back country" of Litchfield, where they bought a
house and settled down. And just as he had feared, his
owner eventually learned of his whereabouts and sent an
emissary, a brisk and rude fellow called Thompson, to re-
claim him. This man confronted the fugitive with a plain
choice : he could buy his freedom, or Thompson would "put
him in irons and send him down to New York, and then on
to Savannah." Grimes described his state of mind and his
subsequent actions as follows :

To be put in irons and dragged back to a state of slavery,
and either leave my wife and children in the street, or take
them into servitude, was a situation in which my soul
now shudders at the thought of having been placed. . . .
I may give my life for the good or the safety of others,
but no law, no consequences, not the lives of millions, can
authorize them to take my life or liberty from me while
innocent of any crime. I have to thank my master, how-
ever, that he took what I had, and freed me. I gave a
deed of my house to a gentleman in Litchfield. He paid
the money for it to Mr. Thompson, who then gave me
my free papers. Oh! how my heart did rejoice and thank
God.

Thus William Grimes became a free man, to live out
the rest of his long life as his own man in a free state. Yet,
as he came to set down his memoirs in later years, he viewed
the condition of slavery and the condition of freedom in a
somewhat ambivalent light :

To say that a man is better fed, and has less care [in
slavery] than in the other, is false. It is true, if you re-
gard him as a brute, as destitute of the feelings of human
nature. But I will not speak on the subject more. Those
slaves who have kind masters are perhaps as happy as the

48 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

generality of mankind. They are not aware what their
condition can be except by their own exertions. I would
advise no slave to leave his master. If he runs away, he
is most sure to be taken. If he is not, he will ever be in
the apprehension of it ; and I do think there is no induce-
ment for a slave to leave his master and be set free in
the Northern States. I have had to work hard ; I have
often been cheated, insulted, abused and injured; yet a
black man, if he will be industrious and honest, can get
along here as well as any one who is poor and in a situa-
tion to be imposed on. I have been very fortunate in life
in this respect. Notwithstanding all my struggles and
sufferings and injuries, I have been an honest man.

William Grimes, escaping in the first decade of the
nineteenth century, found only chance friends to help him.
A quarter-century later, when Daniel Fisher came out of
Virginia and took the name Billy Winters, the Under-
ground Railroad was already partially organized, as his
own story shows : 8

I was born in Westmoreland County, Virgina, about the
year of 1808. I had five brothers and two sisters and was
known as Daniel Fisher. Our master's name was Henry
Cox. When I was about twenty years of age my master
was obliged, on account of heavy losses, to sell me, and I
was sent to Richmond to be sold on the block to the high-
est bidder. The sale took place and the price paid for me
was $550. I was taken by my new master to South Car-
olina. This was in the month of March. I remained there
until October when, in company with another slave, we
stole a horse and started to make our escape. In order
not to tire the animal, we traveled from 10 o'clock at
night until daybreak the next morning when we ran the
horse into the woods and left him, for we knew what
would happen to us if two slaves were seen having a horse
in their possession. We kept on our way on foot, hiding

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 49

by day and walking by night. We were without knowledge
of the country, and with nothing to guide us other than
the north star, which was oftentimes obscured by clouds,
we would unwittingly retrace our steps and find ourselves
back at the starting point. Finally, after days of tedious
walking and privations, fearing to ask for food and get-
ting but little from the slaves we met, we reached Peters-
burg. From Petersburg we easily found our way to Rich-
mond and thence, after wandering in the woods for three
days and nights, we came to my old home at Westmore-
land Court House.

One of the greatest obstacles we had to contend with
was the crossing of rivers, as slaves were not allowed to
cross bridges without a pass from their masters. For
that reason, when we came to the Rappahannock we had
to wait our chance and steal a fisherman's boat in order
to cross. Upon my arrival at my old plantation, I called
upon my young master and begged him to buy me back.
He said he would gladly do it, but he was poorer than
when he sold me. He advised me to stow myself away on
some vessel going north, and as the north meant freedom
I decided to act upon his advice. While awaiting the
opportunity to do so, we (the same slave who had accom-
panied me from South Carolina being with me) secured
shovels and dug us three dens in different localities in the
neighboring woods. In these dens we lived during the day,
and foraged for food in the night time, staying there
about three months. At the end of that time we managed
to stow ourselves away on a vessel loaded with wood bound
for Washington. We were four days without food and
suffered much. When we reached Washington the captain
of the vessel put on a coat of a certain color, and started
out for the public market, telling us to follow and keep
him in sight. At the market he fed us and told us in what
direction to go, starting us on our journey, giving us
two loaves of bread each for food. We took the railroad
track and started for Baltimore. We had gone scarcely

50 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

a mile before we met an Irishman, who decided that we
were runaways, and was determined to give us to the
authorities. However, by telling him a smooth story that
we were sent for by our masters to come to a certain house
just ahead, he let us by. Thinking our bundles of bread
were endangering our safety by raising suspicion, we
threw them away. After that we went several days with-
out food, traveling day and night until we reached the
Delaware river. We walked along the bank of the river
for some five miles in search of a bridge. We finally came
to one, but on attempting to cross were stopped, as we
had no passes. It was a toll bridge, and there was a
woman in charge of it, who upon our payment of a penny
for each and the promise to come back immediately,
allowed us to go by. By this time we were very hungry,
but had no food. At the other end of the bridge we were
stopped again, as the gates were opened only for teams.
However, by exercising our ingenuity and pretending to
look around, we finally managed to slip by in the shadow
of a team, and then, glorious thought ! we were at last on
the free soil of Pennsylvania.

We again took to the woods, knowing that we were
liable to be apprehended at any time. We made a fire,
which attracted attention, and we were soon run out of
our hiding place. We sought another place and built
another fire, and again we were chased away. We made
no more fires. In the course of our further wanderings we
were chased by men and hounds, but managed to escape
capture, and finally arrived in Philadelphia, being three
days on the road. In Philadelphia we found friends who
gave us the choice of liquor or food. I took the food, my
companion the liquor. y

As kidnappers were plenty, it was thought best for
our safety that we separate, and we parted. I saw no
more of my companion. The only weapon for defense
which I had was a razor, one which I had carried all
through my wanderings. In company with some Philadel-
phia colored people, I was taken to New York, and it

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 51

was there I first met members of the Abolition party. At
New York I was put on board a steamboat for New
Haven. Arrived in that city, a colored man took me to
the Tontine Hotel, where a woman gave me a part of a
suit of clothes. I was fed and made comfortable, and then
directed to Deep River, with instructions that upon arriv-
ing there I was to inquire for George Read or Judge
Warner. I walked all the way from New Haven to Deep
River, begging food by the way from the women of the
farm houses, as I was afraid to apply to the men, not
knowing but what they would detain me and give me up.
I traveled the Old Stage Road from New Haven to Deep
River and in going through Killingworth I stopped at the
tavern kept by Landlord Redfield but was driven away.
Upon reaching the "Plains" this side of Winthrop, I
could not read the signs on the post at the forks of the
road, and asked the way of Mrs. Griffing. She drove me
away, but called out, "Take that road," and pointed to it.
Further on I met Harrison Smith, who had a load of
wood which he said was for Deacon Read, the man I was
looking for.

I reached Deep River at last, weary and frightened. I
called at Deacon Read's, told him my circumstances and
gave him my name as Daniel Fisher. All this was in secret.
The good deacon immediately told me that I must never-
more be known as Daniel Fisher, but must take the name
of "William Winters," the name which I have borne to
this day. He furthermore told me that I must thereafter
wear a wig at all times and in all places. After that I
worked at different times for Ambrose Webb and Judge
Warner in Chester, and for Deacon Stevens in Deep
River, getting along very nicely, though always afraid of
being taken by day or by night and carried again to the
South.

In spite of Winters' anxiety, he was relatively secure
in Deep River. In those years it was "a sort of out-of-the-
way location and all Abolitionist," which made it "a pretty

52 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

safe refuge for runaway slaves." 4 It was largely self-con-
tained and self-supporting ; there was no Valley Railroad,
no Shore Line ; even the steamers, recently introduced on
the river, ran at inconvenient hours. "The first colored
man there," a native wrote in later years, "was Billy Win-
ters, a real Christian man, a runaway slave. . . . We boys
flocked to see him carry up from the brook a large tub of
water on his head without spilling any. Deacon Read took
Billy to his home, and he always sat at meals with the
family." 6

This domestic arrangement was quite in line with Dea-
con Read's reputation as a "very generous and public spir-
ited" man who had a significant role in the growth of a
"thoroughly democratic village," 6 where the word "serv-
ant" was never used. Read, in fact, was for years an active
stationmaster on the Underground Railroad, like Judge
Ely Warner and his son Jonathan in Chester. In such an
atmosphere, Uncle Billy Winters lived a life that was ap-
parently happy enough. He was a great favorite among
the village's children, and with their help taught himself to
read, going about among them with a spelling book and
asking them what was this word or that.7 The street on
which he lived is known to this day as Winters Avenue.

If the Underground Railroad operated adequately for
William Winters in 1828, it ran even more smoothly ten
years later when James Lindsey Smith journeyed over its
tracks from Philadelphia north. But he had many fears
and difficulties before he reached that entry port of free-
dom. Smith was born in Virginia, where he passed his early
years as a slave. In boyhood he suffered a serious injury
when a timber was dropped on his knee ; through his mas-
ter's indifference he did not receive proper treatment, with
the result that he was lamed for life.8

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 53

In spite of this handicap, Smith made a break for free-
dom in 1838, along with two other slaves, Lorenzo and
Zip. At their suggestion, he joined them in commandeer-
ing a boat on the Cone River, by which they meant to es-
cape to Maryland and beyond. It was quite calm as they
started on a Sunday, but once out in the bay they found a
good wind. With sails set, they made brisk time as they
headed up Chesapeake Bay, and on the Tuesday night
they landed near Frenchtown, Maryland. "We there
hauled the boat up as best we could, and fastened her,"
wrote James in after years, "then took our bundles and
started on foot. Zip, who had been a sailor from a boy,
knew the country and understood where to go. He was
afraid to go through Frenchtown, so we took a circuitous
route, until we came to the road that leads from French-
town to New Castle. Here I became so exhausted that I was
obliged to rest ; we went into the woods, which were near-by,
and laid down on the ground and slept for an hour or so,
then we started for New Castle."

As they walked on, however, James found it difficult to
keep up with his companions, who occasionally had to stop
and wait until he caught up with them. Finally Zip said,
"Lindsey, we shall have to leave you for our enemies are
after us, and if we wait for you we shall all be taken ; so it
would be better for one to be taken than all three." Then,
telling James the roads he should follow, they went off and
left him behind. James was in despair :

When I lost sight of them, I sat down by the road-side
and wept, prayed, and wished myself back where I first
started. I thought it was all over with me forever ; I
thought one while I would turn back as far as French-
town, and give myself up to be captured ; then I thought
that would not do ; a voice spoke to me, "not to make a
fool of myself, you have got so far from home (about two

54 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

hundred and fifty miles), keep on towards freedom, and
if you are taken, let it be headed towards freedom." I
then took fresh courage and pressed my way onward
towards the north with anxious heart.

Going on in the darkness, James toward morning was
following a railroad track through a cut in a high hill.
Here he had a terrifying experience :

I heard a rumbling sound that seemed to me like thunder ;
it was very dark, and I was afraid that we were to have
a storm ; but this rumbling kept on and did not cease as
thunder does, until at last my hair on my head began to
rise ; I thought the world was coming to an end. I flew
around and asked myself, "What is it?" At last it came so
near to me it seemed as if I could feel the earth shake
from under me, till at last the engine came around the
curve. I got sight of the fire and the smoke ; said I, "It's
the devil, it's the devil !" It was the first engine I had
ever seen or heard of ; I did not know there was anything
of the kind in the world, and being in the night, made it
seem a great deal worse than it was ; I thought my last
days had come ; I shook from head to foot as the monster
came rushing on towards me. The bank was very steep
near where I was standing; a voice says to me, "Fly up
the bank" ; I made a desperate effort, and by the aid of
the bushes and trees which I grasped, I reached the top
of the bank, where there was a fence ; I rolled over the
fence and fell to the ground, and the last words I remem-
ber saying were, that "the devil is about to burn me up,
farewell! farewell!"

How long he lay there James did not know, but when
he came to himself the "devil" had vanished. Despite his
fright, he resumed his journey, shaking and trembling.
Soon after sunrise he heard the rumbling sound again, and
the "devil" came rushing toward him once more. As the in-
fernal machine charged by, James could see through the

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 55

coach windows the souls whom the fiend was carrying to
hell. They were all white ; not a colored face among them.
As the train thundered out of sight, James pressed on in
relief, for it was obvious that the devil was not interested
in him even though in his former home he had been "a
great hand to abuse the old gentleman."

By this time he was famished, and despite a close
search of the ground he could find nothing fit to eat. At
length he came to a farmhouse, where he screwed up his
courage to ask for food despite his fear that he might well
be turned over to slave-catchers. However, the farm peo-
ple accepted without question his statement that he was
going to visit friends in Philadelphia. For twenty-five
cents they gave him a hearty breakfast, and he went on,
feeling like a new man.

By noon he reached New Castle, where he ran into Lo-
renzo and Zip once more. Together, they went to the wa-
terfront, where they learned that a boat made the short
run to Philadelphia twice daily. When the afternoon sail-
ing was ready to leave, all three went aboard. James said :

How we ever passed through New Castle as we did with-
out being detected is more than I can tell, for it was one
of the worst slave towns in the country, and the law was
such that no steamboat, or anything else, could take a
colored person to Philadelphia without first proving his
or her freedom. What makes it so astonishing to me is,
that we walked aboard right in sight of everybody, and
no one spoke a word to us. We went to the captain's office
and bought our tickets, without a word being said to us.

At Philadelphia the three parted on the dock. Lorenzo
and Zip took a ship to Europe; James walked into the
city, not knowing where he was going. Coming to a shoe
store, he went in and asked the white proprietor for work
as a shoemaker. The man told him No, but suggested that

56 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

he might find work at another shoeshop up the street,
whose owner was a colored man named Simpson.

James was perhaps overcautious with Simpson, for he
did not reveal his identity as a fugitive slave. Instead, he
sat there talking "till most night," then asked the shoe-
maker for a place to sleep. That would not be convenient,
said Simpson, but he had a brother who might be able to
help. James, however, could not understand the address
given him, and as Simpson was preparing to close his shop
for the night, he felt himself as badly off as before. At this
point help appeared in an unexpected way :

My heart began to ache within me, for I was puzzled
what to do ; but just before he shut up, a colored minister
came in ; I thought perhaps I could find a friend in him,
and when he was through talking with Simpson he started
to go out, I followed him to the side-walk and asked him
"if he would be kind enough to give me lodging that
night." He told me "he could not, for he was going to
church ; that it would be late before the service closed,
and besides it would not be convenient for him."

Here the same heavy cloud closed in upon me again, for
it was getting dark, and I had no where to sleep that
night. Circumstances were against me ; he told me "I
could get a lodging place if I would go to the tavern."
I made no reply to this advice, but felt somewhat sad,
for my last hope had fled. He then asked me if "I was
free." I told him that "I was a free man." (I did not
intend to let him know that I was a fugitive.) Here I was
in a great dilemma, not knowing what to do or say. He
told me if "I was a fugitive I would find friends." "If
any one needs a friend I do," thought I to myself, for
just at this time I needed the consolation and assistance
of a friend, one on whom I could rely. So thought I, "it
will be best for me to make known that I am a fugitive,
and not to keep it a secret any longer." I told him frankly

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 57

that "I was from the South and that I was a runaway."
He said, "you are"; I said "yes." He asked me if I
"had told Simpson" ; I said "no." He then called Simpson
and asked him "if he knew that this to be a fact," Simp-
son asked me if "that was so?" I said "it was." He then
told me to "come with him, that he had room enough for
me." I went home with him and he introduced me to his
family, and they all had a great time rejoicing over me.
After giving me a good supper, they secreted me in a
little room called the fugitive's room, to sleep ; I soon
forgot all that occurred around me. I was resting quietly
in the arms of sleep, for I was very tired.

But the Underground Railroad agent into whose
hands he had stumbled was not resting. He passed the
word among his fellow abolitionists, and the next day,
wrote James, "many of them came to see me, they talked
of sending me to England ; one Quaker asked me if I would
like 'to see the Queen.' I told him that 'I did not care where
I went so long as I was safe.' They held a meeting that day,
and decided to send me to Springfield, Massachusetts ; this
was the fifth day after I left home. The next day, Friday
morning, Simpson took me down to the steamboat and
started me for New York, giving me a letter directed to
David Ruggles, of New York."

In that city, with the help of a lady he encountered on
the dock, James found his way to Ruggles' house, and the
two "had a great time rejoicing together." He rested there
through the week end, but on Monday Ruggles put him on
a steamer to Hartford, with letters to a Mr. Foster in that
city and a Dr. Osgood in Springfield. James was by now
pretty well in the clear, although he did not think so when
he went to the clerk's cabin to pay his fare :

I asked "how much it would be?" He told me it was three
dollars. I told him it was a large sum of money, more

58 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

than I possessed. He then asked me "how much I had?"
I told him "two dollars and fifty-eight cents." He told
me that "that would not do, and that I must get the rest
of it." I told him "that I was a stranger there, and that
I knew no one." He said: "You should have asked and
found out." I told him "I did, and was told that the fare
would be two dollars, and that was nearly all I possessed
at that time." He requested me to hand it to him, which I
did, and it robbed me of every cent I had. I then took my
ticket and went forward and laid down among some bales
of cotton. It was very chilly and cold, and I felt very
much depressed in spirits and cast down.

Penniless, hungry, and weary, the fugitive fell asleep
among the cotton bales bound for Connecticut's mills.
Later in the evening a waiter found him there, led him to
the now deserted dining cabin, and gave him an excellent
supper that "cost me nothing." A short while thereafter,
he experienced a further alarm:

Before I retired for the night, some one came through
the cabin and told the way-passengers that they must
come to the captain's office and leave the number of their
berth before they retired for the night. I did not know
what he meant by that saying; I thought it meant all
the passengers to pay extra for their berths. Now,
thought I, if that is the case, and I sleep in the berth
all night, and in the morning have no money to pay with,
I shall be in trouble sure enough. As I was very tired, I
desired very much to lie down and sleep till daylight.
I reached Hartford quite early the next morning, so I
lay till I thought the boat was along-side the wharf; I
then got up and dressed myself and looked at the number
of my berth, as I was told to see what it was, so if I should
meet the captain I could tell him.

As it happened, he did not see the captain anywhere.
Coming on deck and wondering how he could find Mr. Fos-
ter, he began to look around :

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 59

While I was looking, I saw a colored man standing, and
seemed to be looking at me ; I went up to him and asked
him if "he knew a man by the name of Foster?" He
replied: "Yes." So he went along with me, and I found
Mr. Foster's residence, by directions given ; and, finding
him at home, I presented the letter. After he had read it,
he began to congratulate me on my escape. When he
had conversed with me awhile, he went out among the
friends, (Abolitionists), and informed them of my cir-
cumstances, in order to solicit aid to forward me to
Springfield. Many of them came in to see me, and received
me cordially ; I began to realize that I had some friends.
I stayed with Mr. Foster till afternoon. He raised three
dollars for my benefit and gave it to me, and then took
me to the steamboat and started me for Springfield.
I reached there a little before night.

James now had reached the end of his appointed jour-
ney. Dr. Samuel Osgood, pastor of a Congregational
church, turned out to be a genuine friend. He made James
welcome in an atmosphere of Christian fellowship, found
him work as a shoemaker, and saw to it that he obtained an
education at a school in Wilbraham. With this training,
James became an active abolitionist, making tours and
giving antislavery lectures throughout southern New Eng-
land. Eventually he settled in Norwich, Connecticut, as
shoemaker and as pastor of a Methodist church. There he
married and in due time raised a worthy family of three
daughters and a son.

William Grimes, Billy Winters, and James Lindsey
Smith all found a refuge in Connecticut itself, but such
was not the case with the bulk of the fugitives who came
into the state. For most of them, freedom lay farther
north. Such a one was the young man called Charles, whose
story was written down by another hand shortly after the
event : 9

60 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

About two years since, whilst on board of one of the
Connecticut River Steam Boats, I observed a young well
dressed colored man, whose appearance and manners par-
ticularly attracted my attention. There was something
unusual in his whole bearing, and had a favorable oppor-
tunity offered, I should have made inquiries respecting
him.

A few months after the above occurence, whilst attend-
ing a meeting at the office of the Connecticut Anti-
Slavery Society in H- , a respectable gentleman of

that city came to the door, evidently in haste and some-
what agitated, and enquired for Mr. B. After a short
absence Mr. B. returned, and stated that the gentleman
who had called him out, was under great anxiety on
account of a young colored man who had been in his
employ about three months, and who had just come to
him in the deepest distress, confessing that he was a
runaway slave, and stating that he had that moment seen
his master and a noted slave dealer pass by, evidently in
search of him and suspecting his residence. The gentle-
man and his family had become much interested in the
young man, and were distressed at the thought of his
being carried back into slavery. No time was to be lost,
as Charles, (the name of the young man,) was confident
he had been seen by his master. Directions were given,
that he should go immediately, and as privately as pos-
sible, to a house designated in the outskirts of the city,

and a gentleman present undertook to take him to F

without delay.

I saw Charles for a few moments before he left H ,

and when my eye first fell on him, I recognized the young
man who had attracted my observation on board the
Steam Boat. . . . Now, when I knew that he was a slave,
that one, who I could not but feel was endowed by his
Maker with qualities, (to say the least) equal to any that
I myself possessed, that such an one should, in this land
of boasted freedom, and in Connecticut too, be claimed

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 61

as a slave, and be compelled to flee before his fellow man,
though guilty of no crime, this greatly increased my
interest, and I felt that there was a law, infinitely supe-
rior to any human laws, that called upon me to assist him
in this his extremity.

The friend who had undertaken to convey him to a
place of safety, was not long in keeping his appointment ;
and, all whose interest had been excited, breathed more
easily when assured that Charles was, for a time cer-
tainly, out of danger. They were soon convinced too that
promptness had probably saved him, as an officer was
searching that vicinity in a few minutes after his depar-
ture.

Charles had one day's rest in F -, when Mr. B. came

from H — — in great haste, and advised that he be imme-
diately removed to some other place, as large rewards
were offered for his apprehension, and search would no
doubt be made here. I shall not soon forget Charles'
quivering lip nor his expression of eye, when told that he
could not remain here; that the pursuers were on his
track. Had the baying of bloodhounds fallen upon his
ear, his spirit could not have sunk more within him. This
feeling, however, was but for a moment. A rigidity of
muscle, and a determined expression soon followed, and
no one could for an instant suppose that it was an idle
threat, when he said, "I will die rather than go back to
slavery."

Charles' trunk had been sent to my care, and at about
ten o'clock, one of our most respectable citizens, with
a worthy colored man, a resident of the town, called for
the trunk with Charles. The tones of his voice, and the
pressure of his hand, as I bade him "good bye," touched
my heart ; and it was also affecting to see the disinterested
benevolence of those, who had undertaken on a night of
almost pitchy darkness to guide this poor stranger to a
place of safety. They found a willing friend in a secluded
part of the town, who secreted him for a few days, when

62 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

another devoted friend of the slave, rode forty miles,
between nine o'clock in the evening and daylight the next
morning, placing the poor fellow entirely out of danger.
He remained in this last place some weeks, whilst negotia-
tions were pending between Dr. Parish and the master ;
which, however, did not result successfully, and poor
Charles was obliged to leave his country for Canada,
where he arrived in safety. Queen Victoria has thereby
gained a valuable subject, and we have lost one, besides
adding to the long list of wrong and oppression, which
already disgraces us in the eyes of the civilized world,
and which cries to Heaven for vengeance.

As the story of Charles and those citizens of "H "

and "F " who helped him makes clear, the Under-
ground Railroad in Connecticut was a well-established, go-
ing concern by the late 1830's. Among its "employees"
were many solid citizens ; and in some places at least, they
could count on the acquiescence or even the outright help
of officers of the law.

Such was the case in Meriden, where two fugitives
named Eldridge and Jones came in disguise as "jockeys
and grooms to the two famous racing horses Phantom and
Fashion." They found refuge with Homer Curtiss, a stout
Underground man, who employed them in the lock shop he
ran in partnership with Harlowe Isbell. The runaways
had been thus engaged for some little time when word of
their whereabouts seeped back to their owners in the
South. The masters thereupon wrote to the sheriff in Meri-
den, offering him a reward if he would kidnap the pair and
return them to bondage. The sheriff did nothing of the
sort ; instead, he relayed the message to Meriden's leading
abolitionist, the Reverend George Perkins. The latter then
wrote the owners to tell them that "under no circumstances
would they be allowed to regain possession of the men."

FUGITIVES IN FLIGHT 63

The matter did not end there, however. Presently one of
the owners appeared in Meriden and "demanded of Mr.
Curtiss that he give up the men, blustering and threaten-
ing the intervention of the U. S. government." Curtiss,
replying bluntly that he had no intention whatever of sur-
rendering the fugitives, "ordered the man from his prem-
ises." Getting nowhere with the locksmith and receiving
no cooperation from the local authorities, the slaveowner
returned home, leaving Eldridge and Jones behind him.10
In Meriden it was a sheriff, in Plainfield it was a judge
who sought to act against the slave-catcher. The case had
its origin in the little village of Hampton, where in 1840
a young Negro girl arrived and found employment. Al-
though they realized that she was probably a runaway, the
townspeople accepted her readily enough. After a time,
one Doit Price appeared to seize her as a fugitive slave,
filing a claim in the manner prescribed by law at the Plain-
field court. He alleged that the girl was the property of his
mother ; but he could not produce the supporting materi-
als required by Connecticut's Personal Liberty Law. The
case was continued until the next day. At the appointed
hour, Price reappeared with a document — which the de-
fense attorney, in a pre-trial conference, immediately rec-
ognized as a fake. He advised Price to forget the girl and
leave town via the stage that was about to depart for Nor-
wich; and Price, caught in a blatant forgery, did so at
once. The judge, when he learned of this development, was
not content to let matters rest; he directed the sheriff to
apprehend Price immediately and return him to court.
But the order came too late. The slave-catcher, now him-
self a fugitive from justice, had already made his escape.
As for the girl who was the cause of the action, the com-
munity's abolitionists entrusted her to Samuel J. May in
Brooklyn, who saw her safely on the road to Canada.11

64 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Perhaps the most notable of the runaways who came to
Connecticut was the Reverend James W. C. Pennington,
pastor of a Hartford congregation and holder of a doc-
tor's degree from the University of Heidelberg, whose
story is told elsewhere in this book. The most spectacular,
however, were the more than forty fugitives who arrived
in New Haven in 1839, not from the American South but
from a foreign country. These were the captives of the
A mis tad.

aSZ51SHS15ESZ5E5HSraSHSH5aSHSZ5Z5HSZ5H5HSESZ5H5Z5aSSSHSH5H5HSB5

CHAPTER

4

THE CAPTIVES OF
THE AMISTAD

There wasn't any doubt about Antonio, the mulatto
cabin boy. He was a slave, property of the late Cap-
tain Ramon Ferrer of the schooner Amistad, and he was
perfectly willing to return to bondage in Cuba. But what
of the forty-odd Negroes, Cinque and Grabbo, Banna and
Tami and the rest? Were they to be treated as runaway
slaves ; or as pirates and murderers ; or as free men who had
asserted their right to liberty by direct action ? And what
of the Amistad herself, her cargo of merchandise, and the
claims to salvage brought forward by Lieutenant Gedney
and others ?

Such were the questions that confronted Andrew T.
Judson — the man who had led the attack on Prudence
Crandall's school — late in the summer of 1839. Before
they were finally answered, years later, the affair of the
Amistad had engaged the attention of three sovereign gov-
ernments, a former American President, a future governor
of Connecticut, several Yale professors, a seaman from Si-
erra Leone, many abolitionist leaders, and hundreds of or-
dinary citizens especially in New Haven and Farmington.
It had supplied antislavery men with some of their best

66 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

opportunities for propaganda, and it had established in
Farmington the climate of sympathy that made that town
so important a transfer point on the Underground Rail-
road.

The story began in the West African backlands.1
There, in April of 1839, slave raiders seized Cinque and
other members of the Mendi tribe, drove them to the coast,
and chained them in the 'tween-decks of a blackbirder
bound for the West Indies. For two months the captives
endured the horrors of the Middle Passage ; but they were
a hardy group, for less than twenty of them died en route
while more than fifty survived.2 Landed at Havana in
mid-June, they were promptly sold as slaves to two Cu-
bans named Pedro Montez and Jose Ruiz.

Among these victims of the slave trade was one older
man, as well as three young girls and several boys, but the
majority were vigorous men in their twenties. They were
not a tall people — none over five feet six inches — and in
color they ranged from ebony to dusky brown ; one or two
were "almost mulatto bright." 3 Cinque, strongly made
and athletic, with a remarkable firmness of bearing and a
commanding presence, was their acknowledged leader.
Grabbo, second in authority, was scarcely less impressive.

The sale of these people in Cuba was completely illegal,
but such happenings were common enough. Spanish law
permitted the keeping of slaves in the colony but not their
importation. Any slave brought from abroad was legally
free the moment he set foot on shore ; and a mixed British
and Spanish commission, established by treaty between
the two powers, sat in Havana to rule on cases involving
slave ships taken at sea. In practice, however, the law was
a dead letter. The mixed commission's powers covered only
the high seas; what happened in territorial waters or
ashore was the business of the Cuban colonial government.

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 67

Through a widespread network of graft and corruption,
those who knew the ropes could receive official title to even
the newest imports from Africa, and all it cost was ten dol-
lars a head.* There was reason to suspect that the United
States consul in Havana was involved in these practices.5

Montez and Ruiz obtained the necessary papers. Then
they embarked their purchases on the schooner Amistad
(the name meant "friendship") for the coastwise run to
Puerto Principe. Since the voyage was not a long one, they
did not confine their bondsmen ; that was a mistake. When
two of the Africans went to the water cask without leave,
they were whipped for it ; that too was a mistake.6

None of the captives understood Spanish, but Banna
knew a few words of English and several could speak a lit-
tle Arabic. And the slave Antonio, cabin boy on the
schooner, had some knowledge of the Mendi tongue. Thus
the Negroes were able to ask the ship's cook where they
were going. And the answer, meant but not received as a
brutal joke, was understood by all: they were going to be
killed and eaten.7

That was the fatal mistake, for it touched off an in-
surrection. Under the leadership of Cinque, the Africans
armed themselves with long, heavy knives used for cutting
sugar cane and rose in revolt on the second night of the
voyage. They killed the cook ; they cut down Captain Fer-
rer, but not before he had killed one of them and injured
several others; they wounded Montez, seized Ruiz and
Antonio, and drove the rest of the crew to the boats. Now
masters of the vessel, they meant to return home. Africa,
they knew, lay two months distant toward the rising sun ;
and they forced the Spaniards to act as navigators and
sail in that direction. By day, when the sun was up, Mon-
tez and Ruiz did as they were bidden, holding the schooner
on an easterly course ; but by night they veered north and

68 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

west, hoping to be picked up and rescued by some passing
ship.8

For two months the Amistad wandered the ocean in
this manner. Water and provisions ran short ; ten or more
of the Negroes died at sea. At length they made a landfall
in the vicinty of Montauk Point, Long Island. After tack-
ing about for two or three days, the schooner dropped an-
chor and Cinque went ashore with some of his followers.
With Spanish money they had found on board, they
bought food and water, a bottle of gin, and two dogs.
They also asked if this country made slaves and if there
were any Spaniards there. The answer to both questions
was No; whereupon Cinque whistled and all his people
jumped up and shouted in joy. They then asked one of
the Long Islanders, Captain Harry Green of Sag Har-
bor, if he would steer them to Africa, and he let them be-
lieve he would do so the next day.8

Now the United States brig Washington, Lieutenant
Thomas R. Gedney commanding, came upon the scene.
Engaged in coastal survey work, Gedney had noticed the
Amistad, and her appearance led him to believe she might
be aground or in distress. He sent a party to board the
schooner ; and its officer, finding only Negroes armed with
cane knives on deck, took control of the vessel at gun point.
Montez and Ruiz, released from below decks, immediately
claimed and were accorded protection. The Negroes ashore
were seized and returned to the Amistad. Cinque jumped
into the sea and started swimming, but he was lassoed and
brought back by a boat's crew. Free country or not, the
Africans were captives again.10

Lieutenant Gedney brought his prize into the nearest
port, New London, where she and the Africans were put
in the custody of the United States marshal. In the United
States District Court — where Andrew T. Judson was the

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 69

recently appointed judge — Gedney and certain Long Is-
landers filed libels for salvage. Montez and Ruiz, advised
by the Spanish consul at New York, entered a claim for
the return of their slaves. The Negroes, charged with pi-
racy and murder, were housed in the New Haven jail. And
the story got into the newspapers — mostly as told by the
Spaniards and Antonio, for Banna's English was frag-
mentary.11

The abolitionists at once swung into action. Within
three days they set up a committee consisting of the Rev-
erend Simeon S. Jocelyn; the Reverend Joshua Leavitt,
editor of The Emancipator; and the wealthy New York
merchant Lewis Tappan. They issued a public appeal for
funds ; they engaged Roger S. Baldwin of New Haven as
counsel for the Africans; they sought the help of John
Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and
now a member of Congress ; 12 and they tried to find an in-
terpreter. In this they had invaluable assistance from Pro-
fessor Josiah W. Gibbs, professor of Hebrew in Yale Col-
lege. He visited the Africans in jail repeatedly, and from
them he learned the Mendi words for the numbers one to
ten. Then he scoured the waterfronts of New Haven and
New York in search of a seaman who could understand
those sounds. Thus he came upon James Covey, a Mendi-
speaking sailor and a former slave from Sierra Leone,
whom he brought to New Haven on September 9. At last
the Africans were able to tell their story in full. Gibbs also
set about learning their language and was soon able to
speak with them himself.13

By this time the Spanish minister in Washington, act-
ing on behalf of his government, had interested himself in
the affair. In a formal note on September 6 he demanded
the extradition of the Negroes to stand trial in Cuba for
piracy and murder. At his instance, the United States dis-

70 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

trict attorney filed further claims in Spain's behalf to the
schooner, the cargo, and the alleged slaves in the District
Court; this action, taken in accordance with the existing
commercial treaty between the two nations, superseded the
individual claims. Thus the Amistad and her captives were
quickly enmeshed in a web of legalisms.14

The first charge to be decided was that of piracy and
murder. Committed by Judge Judson to the Circuit Court,
it came before Judge Smith Thompson in the middle of
September; and he made short work of it. He instructed
the grand jury that, since the alleged crimes had been
committed on a Spanish vessel on the high seas, no United
States court had jurisdiction to deal with them. As for the
Negroes, he ruled that the question of their freedom or
servitude was rightly before the District Court, where it
must be decided. Meanwhile, he said on September 23, the
blacks must remain in custody.15

All the autumn, therefore, while diplomatic and legal
maneuverings went on behind the scenes, Cinque and his
people remained in the New Haven jail; but since Judge
Thompson had ruled that they had committed no crime
against American law, their treatment was hardly that of
ordinary prisoners. They received a constant flow of vis-
itors, not only their attorneys and abolitionist friends but
also many who came because of mere curiosity. They had
regular instruction — in Christian doctrine among other
subjects — from members of the Yale faculty. Strolling on
the Green on pleasant days, leaping about, turning hand-
springs, and performing other "wild feats of agility," they
delighted the crowds of onlookers. They received gifts of
American clothing, with whose unfamiliar intricacies they
struggled in good humor; the girls, it was reported,
thought that shawls were meant to be wound around the
head, like turbans. By their cheerful good nature they won

The Reverend-
Samuel J. May

The Reverend
Amos G. Beman

Beman collection

FOUR ANTISLAVERY LEADERS

Prudence Crandall

Nathaniel Jocelyn

Cinque. The portrait by Nathaniel Jocelyn.

Courtesy of the New Haven Colony Historical Society

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 71

many friends and much popular sympathy. Newspapers
kept the public posted on their personal interests and hab-
its. The Liberator, for example, reported this item taken
from the New Haven Register:

We understand that some of the abolition ladies visited
the jail on Thursday morning, and went through the
delightful and refreshing task of kissing several of the
negroes ! Whether Cinque and Graubo were honored with
their favors, we know not — but the former has expressed
a partiality for his "non-resistant" guests.

Pendleton the jailer was one of the first to recognize the
attraction to these dark prisoners; and, in order to gain
money to buy them additional comforts, he charged admis-
sion to their quarters.16

Among these Africans, the one who commanded the
greatest attention was Cinque. His impressive physique,
his noble bearing, and his unquestioned authority well mer-
ited the sobriquet by which he came to be known — "the
Black Prince." Reproductions of his portrait by Nathan-
iel Jocelyn, abolitionist brother of the Reverend Simeon S.
Jocelyn, were widely distributed in the New Haven area.17

Despite their growing number of well-wishers, the le-
gal status of the Negroes remained precarious. The Span-
ish minister was still pressing for their extradition, and at
least some members of President Van Buren's administra-
tion looked favorably on his request. But the Cabinet de-
cided to leave the question in abeyance until the case had
been decided by the District Court.18 Judge Judson, it was
felt, would make the right decision. He was known to be no
friend of Negroes, and he had been appointed to his office
by the current Administration, which was sympathetic to
the slavocracy.19 Presumably he would order the return of
the Amistad captives to their claimants. In anticipation of

72 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

this decision, a United States Navy vessel was sent to New
Haven, to take the Negroes back to Cuba immediately
Judson so ordered.20

Somehow the abolitionist committee learned of this de-
velopment and prepared countermeasures. A group of
them, of whom Nathaniel Jocelyn was one, laid plans to
free the captives from jail, by force if necessary, and to
spirit them out of the country on a ship of their own.21
Meanwhile, John Quincy Adams had been at work on the
case, examining the legal points and precedents involved
and corresponding with the committee.22 The British gov-
ernment, too, got wind of the affair and made representa-
tions to Madrid on behalf of the Negroes.23 Much was at
stake when the hearings began in the District Court in
January 1840.

The inquiry lasted a week, before a crowded court-
room. So far as the salvage actions were concerned, there
was little doubt as to the facts ; but as to the status of the
Negroes, the facts themselves were in question. Montez
and Ruiz asserted lawful ownership of these people ; and
their claim was backed by passports, issued in Havana on
June 27 and signed by the Captain General of Cuba, in
which the Africans were identified by Spanish names and
were declared to be negros ladinos (literally, "smart
blacks" — a term used to designate slaves long resident in
the island) and the property of the two Spaniards. On the
face of things, these papers were legal proof of ownership.
But the Negroes, through their counsel, had petitioned for
their release, stating that they were free-born Africans
who had been unlawfully captured and sold into slavery.
Moreover, there was before the Court a deposition from
James Covey, describing his conversations with the Am-
istad captives and stating his belief that they told the sim-
ple truth. A further deposition, from Richard R. Madden

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 73

of the mixed British-Spanish commission in Havana, per-
haps carried more weight. Madden described in detail the
net of chicanery by which "Bozal negroes," as newly im-
ported slaves were called, were freely bought and sold un-
der false papers with the connivance of the Cuban author-
ities. He further recounted his brief talks in Arabic with
some of the Amistad men, and his conviction that they
were indeed Bozals and hence free under Spanish law. Jud-
son was faced on the one hand with official documents ; on
the other, with knowledgeable testimony indicating that
the documents were fraudulent.24

Finally the judge handed down his rulings on January
23. Antonio, the Amistad, and the cargo — less salvage pay-
ments— were to be returned to their owners. The salvage
claim of Lieutenant Gedney was upheld, those of the Long
Island men denied. As to the Negroes, "Cinquez and Gra-
beau shall not sigh for Africa in vain. Bloody as may be
their hands, they shall yet embrace their kindred." 2B They
were in fact free men. As such, they were to be "delivered
to the President of the United States by the Marshal of the
District of Connecticut, to be by him transported to Af-
rica" as provided by law in such cases.26

The United States attorney was not at all satisfied
with this ruling. He at once moved an appeal to the Cir-
cuit Court, which in April upheld Judson's decisions.
Again there was an appeal, to the Supreme Court, which
would be the final authority.27 For the Negroes, this meant
more months of waiting in relatively mild detention. For
their friends, it meant preparation for a further court
case; and now John Quincy Adams joined Roger S. Bald-
win in the thick of the fight.

The former President was well over seventy years of
age but still deeply engrossed in public affairs. From the
beginning he had been interested in the fate of the Am-

74 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

istad captives. As early as October 1, 1839, he wrote: "But
that which now absorbs great part of my time and all my
good feelings is the case of the fifty-three African negroes
taken at sea, off Montauk Point, by Lieutenant Gedney" ;
and his diary for the next eighteen months is dotted with
references to the affair.28 He had studied the legal prece-
dents, he had badgered the Administration with demands
for its correspondence with the Spanish minister, he had
pried deeply into the activities of the American consul at
Havana, and he had given Baldwin the benefit of his ad-
vice. But he had also been carrying a full load of work as
a member of the House of Representatives and chairman
of several of its committees, so that he had taken no active
part in the previous court hearings. Now, at the urging of
Ellis Gray Loring and Lewis Tappan, he agreed to ap-
pear with Baldwin as counsel at the Supreme Court hear-
ing, set for January 1841. He dug more deeply than ever
into all aspects of the case, studied the scrapbooks of news-
paper clippings that were the fruit of the abolitionists'
propaganda efforts, conferred with Baldwin in person,
and visited the captives in New Haven.29 A few weeks later
the boy Ka-le sent him a letter, stating in painfully
learned English the case as the Africans saw it : 30

Dear Friend Mr. Adams:

I want to write a letter to you because you love Mendi
people, and you talk to the grand court. We want to tell
you one thing. Jose Ruiz say we born in Havana, he tell
lie. We stay in Havana 10 days and 10 nights, we stay
no more. We all born in Mendi — we no understand the
Spanish language. Mendi people been in America 17
moons. We talk American language little, not very good ;
we write every day ; we write plenty letters ; we read most
all time ; we read all Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and
John, and plenty of little books. We love books very

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 75

much. We want you you to ask the Court what we have
done wrong. What for Americans keep us in prison.
Some people say Mendi people crazy ; Mendi people dolt,
because we no talk American language. Merica people no
talk Mendi language ; Merica people dolt ? They tell bad
things about Mendi people, and we no understand. Some
men say Mendi people very happy because they laugh
and have plenty to eat. Mr. Pendleton come, and Mendi
people all look sorry because they think about Mendi
land and friends we no see now. Mr. Pendleton say
Mendi people angry ; white men afraid of Mendi people.
The Mendi people no look sorry again — that why we
laugh. But Mendi people feel sorry ; 0, we can't tell how
sorry. Some people say, Mendi people got no souls. Why
we feel bad, we got no souls? We want to be free very
much.

Dear friend Mr. Adams, you have children, you have
friends, you love them, you feel very sorry if Mendi
people come and carry them all to Africa. We feel bad
for our friends, and our friends all feel bad for us. Amer-
icans no take us in ship. We on shore and Americans tell
us slave ship catch us. They say we make you free. If they
make us free they tell true, if they no make us free
they tell lie. If America people give us free we glad, if
they no give us free we sorry — we sorry for Mendi people
little, we sorry for America people great deal, because
God punish liars. We want you to tell court that Mendi
people no want to go back to Havana, we no want to be
killed. Dear friend, we want you to know how we feel.
Mendi people think, think, think. Nobody know what he
think; teacher he know, we tell him some. Mendi people
have got souls. We think we know God punish us if we
tell lie. We never tell lie ; we speak truth. What for Mendi
people afraid? Because they got souls. Cook say he kill,
he eat Mendi people — we afraid — we kill cook ; then cap-
tain kill one man with knife, and cut Mendi people plenty.
We never kill captain, he no kill us. If Court ask who

76 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

brought Mendi people to America? We bring ourselves.
Ceci hold the rudder. All we want is make us free.

Your friend,
Ka-le

In the middle of January Adams had a visit from
Henry Stephen Fox, minister of Great Britain. He had
heard, said Fox, that the Court would deliver up these un-
fortunate men to the Cuban claimants — a decision that
would not be pleasing to Her Majesty's Government. Ad-
ams advised him to address a note to the Secretary of State,
requesting the President's intervention if the case should
turn out thus.31

The hearing before the Supreme Court was first de-
layed by the absence of Justice Joseph Story, then inter-
rupted by the sudden death of Justice Philip Barbour. It
began on February 20, lasting until March 2. The case for
the United States — that is, for the return of the Negroes
to slave status — was presented by Attorney-General
Henry D. Gilpin, who based his contention on the pass-
ports issued by the Captain General of Cuba. For the cap-
tives, Baldwin spoke first. He was "sound and eloquent
. . . powerful and perhaps conclusive"; but Adams was
"apprehensive there are some precedents and an Executive
influence operating on the Court which will turn the bal-
ance against us." 32 When his own turn came to speak, the
former President built his argument about a single theme
— justice — stressing his view that "an immense array of
power — the Executive Administration, instigated by the
Minister of a foreign nation — has been brought to bear, in
this case, on the side of injustice." His argument, extend-
ing over two days, occupied more than eight hours ; yet he
was not too well pleased with his own performance.33

He need not have worried. The decision of the Su-
preme Court, handed down on March 9, was written by

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 77

Justice Story. It upheld the lower courts as to the salvage
claims, the Amistad and her cargo, and the status of An-
tonio, who all this while had been detained as a possible
witness. Then it spoke of the African captives. After re-
viewing the facts and the applicable laws and treaties, it
concluded with these words : 34

Upon the whole, our opinion is that the decree of the
Circuit Court, affirming that of the District Court, ought
to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to
be delivered to the President, to be transported to Africa
. . . and, as to this, it ought to be reversed : and that the
said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from
the custody of the court, and go without day.

This decision delighted the abolitionists, and the Ne-
groes were over j oyed, kneeling in thanks to God once their
initial incredulity had been dispelled. Gedney too was
pleased, for he received as salvage one-third of the value of
the Amistad and her cargo, which had long since been sold
by court order. The Spanish claimants, however, contin-
ued to press for indemnities through diplomatic channels,
but without success; the last of a series of measures to
grant them relief died in Congress as late as 1858. As for
Antonio, who had professed a willingness to return to slav-
ery in Cuba, eighteen months in the United States had
changed his mind. On the eve of his delivery to the Span-
ish authorities he slipped away and sought protection from
Lewis Tappan, who sent him to freedom via the Under-
ground Railroad.35

Now Cinque and his people were free at last ; but what
could they do ? They had no money, no means of earning
a livelihood in America. They had no way of getting back
to Africa, as they wished. Adams believed that the United
States government was "bound in the forum of conscience
to send them home at its own charge" and probably should

78 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

"indemnify them liberally for eighteen months of false im-
prisonment" ; 36 but nothing came of this suggestion. The
quondam captives remained, in fact, dependent on their
abolitionist friends.

Their friends did not fail them. With renewed vigor,
they set about soliciting money for the relief of the Ne-
groes, some of whom were taken about New England by
Lewis Tappan in a series of fund-raising meetings. But
most were removed to a quiet Connecticut village where
they could live in peace while their affairs were being ar-
ranged. That village was Farmington.37

Farmington was an excellent choice. It was easily
reached from Hartford by road and from New Haven by
canal, yet it was sufficiently out of the way to be placid
and largely self-contained. Its two thousand inhabitants
included only a few apologists for slavery, while among
the 110 members of its two antislavery societies were many
of the town's leading citizens. It was already the scene of
Underground Railroad activities. To this haven the cap-
tives, now free men all, were brought in the spring of
1841.38

Samuel Deming and Austin F. Williams were among
the local citizens who arranged for the reception and care
of the so-called "Mendi Indians," but many others helped.
The men were lodged in a barracks "at the rear of the old
Wadsworth House . . . adjoining the cemetery," where
they speedily made themselves at home; the three girls
lived with local families.39 A school was established for
them in the upper floor of the Bidwell & Deming store,
where Professor George E. Day of Yale continued their
instruction ; their progress in reading, spelling, and arith-
metic, achieved under such unpropitious circumstances,
made a very favorable impression. Nor was the good of

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 79

their souls neglected, for they were taken to church serv-
ices in a body.40

These visitors from a far continent added an exotic
touch to the quiet life of the village. At first, stories were
abroad to the effect that the Negroes were cannibals and
hence dangerous, but they proved to be the most gentle of
people, wandering freely about the town and making
friends with everyone.41 They soon became welcome visi-
tors in many homes, and they were particularly popular
with the children, who found delightful companions in
these "big sable playmates." In later years one Farming-
ton boy recalled "how this same Black Prince used to toss
me up and seat me on his broad shoulder while he executed
a barbaric dance on the lawn for my entertainment" ; and
again :

A broad flight of steps then led down from the southern
piazza of my father's house, and I distinctly remember
seeing the athletic Cinquez turn a somersault from these
steps and then go on down the sloping lawn in a suc-
cession of hand springs heels over head, to the wonder-
ment and admiration of my big brothers and myself.

The Africans also excelled as swimmers, and in warmer
weather they spent many hours splashing about in the ca-
nal. There, in August, tragedy struck. Grabbo, also known
as Foone, drowned while swimming in Pitkin's Basin, de-
spite his proficiency in the water. Some believed he was
seized with a cramp ; some held that he made a futile at-
tempt to extricate from the Basin the body of "young
Chamberlain, who had been drowned," and that, entan-
gling himself in the dam, he lost his life too. Still others
thought it a case of suicide, brought on by despondency
over his long separation from wife and family in Africa.

80 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

In any case, a monument was erected to his memory in the
nearby cemetery.43

Not all the "Mendi Indians" took part in such ath-
letic activities. Fourteen-year-old Tami, straight and lithe,
with a soft voice and a sweet smile, loved to talk of the
simple life in her home country, of the beehive straw
houses and the village games she remembered so well. She
took great pleasure in tending a little flower garden and
was delighted when she succeeded in getting some pineap-
ples to grow. But she too knew a dark moment : 44

One night after all had retired to their rooms, Tamie
came to my door and when I opened it, she stood there
the picture of despair ; taking my hand she led me to a
north window in her room where she exclaimed "I think
we never see Mendi any more." The banners of an ex-
tremely brillant Aurora Borealis were flashing in the sky
and she was sure they would be destroyed but was reas-
sured when I told her that at certain seasons we often
had those lights.

Thus the spring and the summer and the autumn
passed, while the Negroes waited at Farmington and the
abolitionist committee worked on the problem of getting
them back home. First the committee members tried to en-
list the help of the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, to whom they proposed an antislavery
mission to the Mendi country, to be financed in part by
the funds they had raised. When this approach proved
futile, the abolitionists established their own "Mendi Mis-
sion," with the Reverend William Raymond and the Rev-
erend James Steele in charge. After a public farewell
meeting at New York's Broadway Tabernacle on Novem-
ber 27, 1841, the captives of the Amistad at last took ship
for Sierra Leone and the homes from which they had been
snatched nearly three years previously. The mission thus

THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD 81

established endured for many years. Margroo or Sarah,
one of the three girls, grew up to become a teacher in its
school, and Cinque was its interpreter at the time of his
death in 1879.45

Of those who had helped the captives in their dark
days, John Quincy Adams continued to serve in Congress
until his death in 1848, a crusty fighter for justice up to
the end. Roger S. Baldwin became governor of Connecti-
cut in 1844, advocating votes for Negroes and a law to
hinder slave-catchers in the state. Four years later, as a
member of the United States Senate, he voted against an
appropriation to satisfy Spanish claims for indemnity in
the Amistad case. The abolitionists used the affair as a
perfect occasion to close their own ranks and to create
widespread sympathy for the helpless children of Africa.
And the people of Farmington, fully awake now to the
evils and injustices of slavery, converted their town into
the most important crossroads on Connecticut's Under-
ground Railway.46

aSaSESHSZSHSZSZSanSE5ESHFaSHS£SZ5ZEHSE5ESH5a5ZSZ5HSE5ZnSE5ZS

CHAPTE

> 5

A HOUSE DIVIDED

The affair of the Amistad Negroes unquestionably
stimulated Connecticut's traditional Yankee devo-
tion to independence, and it aroused widespread sympathy
for those who were held as slaves, whether in Africa or in
the American South. All over the state, people who be-
lieved in freedom made their views increasingly plain, their
voices increasingly heard during the next decade.

Such a one was Maria W. Chapman, whose poem
"Connecticut" began with the following words : 1

Come, toil-worn, and care-worn, and battle-worn friends !
Ye bound with the bondman, till tyranny ends !
From the glimmer of dawn on the waves of the sea,
To the shadows of sunset, wherever ye be,
Take courage and comfort ! Our land of bright streams
And beautiful valleys, awakes from her dreams,
At the sound of your voices, and calls from its grave
The Spirit of Freedom, to shelter the slave.

Another outspoken opponent of slavery was the R&xer,-
end George W. Perkins of Meriden, who as a Congrega-
tional clergyman was a member of the dominant religious
institution of the time. In 1845 he submitted to the Gen-
eral Association of Congregational Ministers of Connecti-
cut the following resolutions : 2

1. That no man is bound in conscience to obey the slave
law.

A HOUSE DIVIDED 83

2. That it may be matter of judgment and expediency
what measures should be taken and what risks incurred in
aiding the colored men to escape from bondage . . . the
right to give such aid, we hold to be undeniable.

The Congregational body as a whole, however, was not
ready to endorse such a strong statement in support of
the abolitionist movement and of the Underground Rail-
road. The Reverend Mr. Andrews refused to vote for any
resolution that described slaveholding as a sin. The Rev-
erend E. Hall, while stating that "he abhorred slavery to-
tally from the bottom of his heart," nevertheless opposed
the Perkins resolutions as "rank Garrisonism." TheJN.ew
York Observer, commenting on the proceedings, took a
similar view. "The resolutions introduced by Mr. Perkins,"
its editor said, "were the most ultra and untenable ever
heard of in any ecclesiastical body." The Association's
members were apparently of similar mind, for the resolu-
tions were overwhelmingly defeated.3

Such were the feelings of Connecticut's most numer-
ous and powerful religious group ; for the Congregational
Church, although it contributed abolitionist leaders, also
supplied some of the most ardent defenders of slavery.
Among other denominations, the Quakers, Baptists, and
Methodists were the most active in the cause of abolition ; 4
the Catholic Church, however — mindful of being criticized
for espousing the idea of a strong central government —
accepted slavery as a "matter of local concern," and there-
fore it "advocated state rather than federal control." 5

At this time, too, the abolitionists — or some of them
— stepped directly into the political arena. The followers
of William Lloyd Garrison took no part in this action.
With their leader, they thought of the Constitution of the
United States as a document of slavery, hence worthy of
no respect ; and they felt bound in conscience to ignore it

84 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

and the government established under its terms, refusing
to vote in any election. But by no means did all antislavery
men agree with this position. Many believed that political
action within the existing framework of American govern-
ment was not only proper but necessary in the abolition-
ist cause. Men of this view, after a series of preliminary
gatherings in Ohio, Western New York, and elsewhere,
met in convention at Albany in the spring of 1840.
From this meeting there emerged a new political organ-
ization, the Liberty Party. Its candidate for the Presi-
dency was James G. Birney, attorney and sometime slave-
holder in Alabama, who under the influence of Theodore
Weld had become first an advocate of colonization, then
of total emancipation. He was now one of the most influ-
ential and respected leaders of the abolition movement. In
the election of 1840, Birney polled only some 7000 of the
2,400,000 votes cast ; but the Liberty Party was nonethe-
less the political seed which sprouted into the Republican
Party and led to the overthrow of slavery two decades
later.6

In Connecticut, the Liberty Party had scarcely more
success than it did on the national scene. In the 1842 elec-
tion, Francis Gillette of Bloomfield was its candidate for
governor. He received but 1319 votes — a mere handful,
but a significant straw in the political wind. By 1845 the
Liberty Party voters had increased to more than 2000, in-
dicative of a rising tide of antislavery feeling in the state.7

Perhaps as a result of that growing sentiment for free-
dom, the General Assembly in 1848 enacted a bill provid-
ing that "no person shall hereafter be held in slavery in
this State" and that all the slaves freed by the measure —
in fact, only six in number — were to be supported for life
by their former owners.8 This act of abolition created small
stir ; there was no official pronouncement of universal free-

A HOUSE DIVIDED 85

dom, no celebrations or mass meetings either in support or
in protest, for slavery had long been a dead letter in Con-
necticut.

Antislavery propaganda, symptomatic of the age's
"restless agitation for the betterment of civilization," 9
grew in quantity and in outspoken boldness during the
1840's. A leading voice was that of the Charter Oak,
which had been merged with the Christian Freeman and
which was now edited by William H. Burleigh, "self-edu-
cated genius — farmer, printer, journalist, and lawyer,"
who had been active in the Liberty Party in Pennsylva-
nia. By 1847, he was boldly calling for greater activity on
the Underground Railroad : 10

If one aids the slaves to escape he has pointed a fellow-
being to his inalienable birth-right, Liberty. He has
remembered those in bonds as bound with them — he has
done an act which brings him nearer to the heart of God.
. . . As long as men are capable of perceiving the dis-
tinction between right and wrong, so long will the uncor-
rupted heart and conscience side with the slave in his
efforts to be free, — and the good and the brave will stand
ready to aid him in his work of self -deliverance.

That such propaganda had its effects is not surprising.
The number of convinced abolitionists increased; and it
was said that, if the black race were petted anywhere in
the world, it must have been in Connecticut, Massachu-
setts, and Rhode Island. In some circles — even among per-
sons not notable for humane attitudes and behavior — it
became almost the fashionable thing to show sympathy
for the Negro in distress. One instance involved a Hart-
ford man who had "superintended the sale of sixty white
paupers and was some time after appealed to on behalf of
a runaway slave. His 'phelinks' were so wonderfully stirred
by the color of the applicant that he gave him $10, took

86 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

him home, clothed and fed him, at an expense equal to what
he had sold a white pauper fellow-townwoman for under
the hammer. This virtue, however, proved its own reward,
since the 'runaway slave' turned out to be a knavish wood-
sawyer from a distant town, who was making a raise on the
'fugitive dodge.' " u

Nonetheless, so far as much of Connecticut was con-
cerned, abolitionists were unpopular and free Negroes
were held in contempt.12 Under the law, they occupied a
sort of second-class status. The state constitution of 1818
granted them citizenship but denied them the franchise,
which was limited to free white males. It was only natural,
in these circumstances, that the Southern point of view
commanded widespread sympathy, especially in the busi-
ness community.

Cotton was a principal reason. It provided a close com-
mercial tie between the Southern planter, who depended
on slave labor, and the New England mill owner, who de-
pended on a crop grown by slaves. In 1818 there were 67
cotton mills in Connecticut; by 1845 the number had
grown to 136, and textile production was a leading indus-
try of the state.13 The consumption of cotton was tremen-
dous. It was a major item of cargo on the steamers that
regularly traveled between New York and Hartford, via
Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River. A single
concern, the Russell Manufacturing Company of Middle-
town, required 3100 bales a year to feed the 15,000 spin-
dles in its three mills. The proprietors of such establish-
ments were naturally not inclined to hold views or to
encourage activities that would interfere with the smooth
flow of their commerce, particularly when the South itself
constituted an important market for their goods. Hart-
ford and Connecticut, it was said, were so closely con-

The Reverend
George W. Perkins

Levi Yale

Photo courtesy the subject's granddaughter,
Mrs. Laura Churchill

FOUR UNDERGROUND AGENTS

Benjamin Douglas

The Reverend
Samuel W. S. Button

The Chaffee House, Windsor

Photo by the Author

TWO UNDERGROUND STATIONS

The Coe House, Wins ted

Photo courtesy Mrs. William Barrett

A HOUSE DIVIDED 87

nected with the cotton fields that the abolitionists there
found it difficult to do their work.14

Yankee peddlers, too, had a part in creating sympathy
for the Southern position. These men for decades past had
been engaged in distributing Connecticut's small-scale
products all along the eastern seaboard, from Maine to
Georgia. Traveling generally by wagon, they sold their
goods from door to door, not only in towns but on isolated
farms and plantations as well, and they often enjoyed the
overnight hospitality of those who purchased their wares.
Some of these peddlers are known to have been active in
the operations of the Underground Railroad, even trans-
porting black passengers hidden beneath the goods in
their red carts.15 Others came back from their trips with
an entirely different reaction : 16

Connecticut clock peddlers who went South ... to vend
their wares among the planters, were often so desirous of
pleasing those of whom they sought patronage that they
did not scan too closely the workings of the "peculiar
institution." These peddlers often made a "good spec" at
their business and were hospitably entertained by those
who bought their time-pieces. So they came back with
their original antislavery notions modified ; or some of
these peddlers confessed to a "change of views" on the
question and of these, some were even ready to help catch
the runaways.

Connecticut in the 1840's, then, was a state of divided
mind, where the antislavery speaker might find hecklers
as well as sympathizers among his audience in the lecture
hall, while he and his property might be subject to any
kind of harassment at any time. Thus, in Mystic and Nau-
gatuck, squirt guns were used to dampen the ardor of abo-
litionist speakers; and Abby Kelly, who campaigned for

88 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

abolition as tirelessly as for women's rights, had a hymn-
book hurled at her head while waiting to speak at a church
in East Bridgewater.17

Among the leaders of proslavery opinion were men of
property, leaders in the professions and in business. Such
at least was the case in Waterbury, as one antislavery
spokesman reported : 18

I have spent most of the day in Waterbury. There is, per-
haps, no place in America where manufacturing, in its
every variety, is carried on as here. In wood, in iron, in
brass, in wool, in every thing almost, there are mills and
manufactures of incredible extent. But the conservatism
of the people is beyond the power of language to express.
The first person with whom I spoke (a truly civil and
polite gentleman, near the depot) told me there were few
except true Whigs and Democrats in town ; and he added,
"I don't believe there is one among them all who would
not aid in the return of a fugitive."

Sometimes the opposition to antislavery speakers ex-
pressed itself in truly mean and despicable ways. An ex-
perience of the escaped slave James Lindsey Smith, on a
lecturing trip with Dr. Hudson, was perhaps typical : 19

When we were in Saybrook there was but one Abolitionist
in the place, and whose wife was sick. As we could not be
accommodated at his house, we stopped at a tavern ; the
inmates were very bitter toward us, and more especially
to the Doctor. I became much alarmed about my own
situation ; there was an old sea captain there that night,
and while in conversation with the Doctor, had some very
hard talk, which resulted in a dispute, or contest of
words ; I thought it would terminate in a fight. The cap-
tain asked the doctor, "what do you know about slavery?
All you know about it I suppose, is what this fellow
(meaning me) has told you, and if I knew who his master

A HOUSE DIVIDED 89

was, and where he was, I would write to him to come on
and take him." This frightened me very much ; I whis-
pered to the Doctor that we had better retire for the
night. We went to our rooms. I feared I should be taken
out of my room before morning, so I barred my door with
chairs and other furniture that was in the room, before
I went to bed. Notwithstanding, I did not sleep much that
night. When we had arisen the next morning and dressed
ourselves, we went down stairs, but did not stay to break-
fast ; we took our breakfast at the house of the man whose
wife was sick. We gave out notice, by hand-bills, that we
would lecture in the afternoon so we made preparation,
and went at the time appointed. The hall was filled to its
utmost capacity, but we could not do much, owing to the
pressure that was so strong against us : hence we had no
success in this place. We went to the tavern and stayed
that night. The next morning we went about two miles
from this place to the township, and stopped at the house
of a friend; one of the same persuasion. He went to the
school committee, and got the use of the school-house. We
gave out notice that there would be an anti-slavery lec-
ture in the school-house that night. When it was time for
us, word came that we could not have the school-house for
the purpose of such a lecture.

We thought that we would not be out-done by obsta-
cles. The man at whose house we were stopping cordially
told us that we might have the use of his house; so we
changed the place of the lecture from the school-house to
his house. The house was full ; and we had, as we thought,
a good meeting. At the close of the lecture the people
retired for home. After awhile we retired for the evening,
feeling that we had the victory. The next morning the
Doctor went to the barn to feed his horse, and found
that some one had entered the barn and shaved his horse's
mane and tail close to the skin ; and besides, had cut our
buffalo robe all in pieces ; besides shaving the horse, the
villains had cut his ears off. It was the most distressed

90 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

looking animal you ever saw, and was indeed to be pitied.
The Dr. gathered up the fragments of the buffalo robe
and brought them to the house ; it was a sight to behold !
We intended to have left that day, but we changed our
minds and stayed over another meeting. The house was
crowded to excess that evening; at the close of the service
the Doctor told how some one had shaved and cut his
horse, and brought out the cut robe and held it up before
the people, saying : "This is the way the friends of slavery
have treated me. Those who have done it are known, but
I shall not hurt a hair of their heads. I hope the Lord
may forgive them." The people seemed to feel very badly
about it.

While Smith continued to bear witness against slavery
on the lecture platform, other leaders of Connecticut's
Negroes were pressing their claims to full-scale citizen-
ship. Despite the recommendation of Governor Baldwin
after his election in 1844, they were still denied the right
to vote ; the General Assembly in 1847 defeated a measure
that would have given them the franchise. Among the
spokesmen for the state's colored community who particu-
larly resented this condition of affairs was Selah Mills Af-
ricanus of Hartford. Born in New York City in 1822, he
had been taught by his father to guide his life by three
principles: religion, learning, and liberty. A persuasive
speaker and a fervent champion of his people, he issued a
stirring call to arms in a proclamation addressed to the
"Colored Men of Connecticut": 20

Brethren: — We propose to meet you in Convention, in
the city of New Haven, on Wednesday, the 12th day of
September, 1849, to consider our Political condition, and
to devise measures for our elevation and advancement.
Action on our part is imperatively necessary to secure the
acknowledgement of our rights, and the enactment and

A HOUSE DIVIDED 91

administration of impartial laws affecting us, by the
proper State authorities. Now as a body, we have no
political existence. We are dead to citizenship, struck
down by an unrighteous State Constitution, and our life
spark quenched by a Cruel and unreasonable prejudice.
But a voice is sounding through all lands, quickening and
energizing the slumbering millions ! Shall not we hear it
and live also?

The shouts of hosts, battling for Freedom, are wafted
to us continually over the waves. Shall we not swell the
sounds? The hearts of all true lovers of Liberty and
Human Progress, are beating high with hope ; shall we
sit alone desponding and inactive? We have reason to
believe that the night is far spent, and an auspicious day
is dawning upon us. Evidences of progress are numerous
and increasing in our own States ; shall we not prepare
for the crisis?

We bid you come, then, from the four corners of the
State — from the valley of the Housatonic and the Con-
necticut— from the borders of free Massachusetts and
the western bounds of impartial Rhode Island! Let the
dwellers on our southern shores, who witness daily the
mighty pulsations of Old Ocean, come up as bold and
irresistible, and roll on the tide wave of Liberty. Let
resolute and hopeful men of every profession and occupa-
tion come. Age and Youth — the sons of ease and the sons
of toil — the land holder and the landless — there's a wel-
come and work for all ! Come in the strength and fear of
God, and in the certainty of ultimate success by His
blessing on our united efforts.

In accordance with this summons, the Connecticut
State Convention of Colored Men assembled in New Ha-
ven on the appointed day. With Jehiel C. Beman of Mid-
dletown as president, the nearly one hundred delegates
proceeded to discuss their problems and what steps might
be taken. One of the subjects considered was "giving the

92 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Bible to the Slaves," on which the fugitive Henry Bibb
spoke at length. But the major topic of the assemblage
was the question of Negro suffrage, which was demanded
in a series of resolutions adopted by the Convention.

Despite their sincerity and the obvious justice of their
case, these resolutions produced no immediate result. Even
as late as 1857, the voters of Connecticut were unwilling to
extend the franchise to their colored fellow citizens. In
that year an amendment to the state constitution, laid be-
fore the people in referendum, was defeated by a count of
19,148 against to 5553 for — a margin of approximately
three and a half to one.21 Not until the Fifteenth Amend-
ment to the federal Constitution came into effect in 1870
were Connecticut's Negroes at last assured the right to
cast ballots.

By that time, some of Connecticut's Negroes had
ceased to care. In the dangerous period that opened with
the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they had
followed the Underground Railroad out of the country.

t$titt&$&££5tett5&S1ZSV^^

CHAPTER

6

"THIS PRETENDED LAW
WE CANNOT OBEY"

The split between North and South became wider and
more serious as the number of runaway slaves became
ever greater. It has been estimated that in the decade of
the 1840's over a thousand fugitives annually escaped
from what abolitionists liked to call "the land of whips and
chains." x These runaways represented, among other
things, a serious financial loss to slaveholders ; a good slave
in a good market might be worth $1000 or even $1500,
though the average was considerably less. It was not sur-
prising that Southern representatives in Congress con-
stantly moved for a strengthening of the existing fugitive
slave laws. A contributing factor was the decision of the
Supreme Court in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania in
1842 ; for that ruling, while maintaining that the power to
legislate on fugitives lay solely with Congress, also held
that the states and their officials were not obliged to en-
force the federal statutes. This decision touched off a new
wave of "personal liberty laws" in Northern states, which
in turn led to increased Southern pressure for a new Con-
gressional enactment.2

Meanwhile, dark clouds were hovering over the Rio

94 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Grande. American settlers in Texas, many of them slave-
holders, had declared their independence of Mexico and
had won it in battle in 1836. They now sought annexation
by the United States, a prospect that disturbed many
Northerners as much as it delighted many Southerners.
Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the balance be-
tween slave and free states had been maintained by admit-
ting two new states at a time, one in each category. If
Texas came in by itself, the slave power would predomi-
nate; and the fact that Mexico would regard annexation
as "equivalent to a declaration of war" would obligate the
North to accept the resulting imbalance.3

The Southerners had their way. Texas was admitted
to the Union in 1845, war with Mexico followed, and the
United States by its victory gained vast new lands stretoh-
ing all the way from the high prairies to the Pacific — New
Mexico, California, and what is today Arizona.4 Would
these territories be admitted as slave states or as free ones ?
Controversy over this question exacerbated the growing
sectional conflict and became a major national issue. At
length those two masters of quid pro quo politics, Henry
Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts,
worked out what many thought was a solution. This set-
tlement, known as the Compromise of 1850, was adopted
by Congress on September 18 of that year, despite great
debate and disagreement. It embodied these chief provi-
sions : 5

1. The size of Texas would be somewhat reduced by allot-
ing some of its territory to New Mexico, for which
Texas was to be recompensed by the United States
government ;

2. California would be admitted to the Union as a free
state ;

3. New Mexico and Utah would be admitted, when ready,

"this pretended law we cannot obey" 95

as either slave or free, according to the determination
of their settlers ;

4. The slave trade would be abolished in the District of
Columbia ;

5. A new and strict fugitive slave law would be enacted.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, adopted as a result
of the compromise, was a drastic act indeed. It deprived
the accused fugitive of any right to a trial by jury. Worse
still, it provided that he could not even testify in his own
behalf. Laying the jurisdiction of fugitive cases in the
hands of federal commissioners appointed for this purpose,
it directed United States marshals to apprehend alleged
runaways, under pain of a fine of $1000 for failure to do
so or for permitting a fugitive to escape. It permitted any-
one at all to have an alleged runaway seized, without a
warrant, and to bring him before a commissioner. That
official had summary power to decide the case, and he was
recompensed by a fee — ten dollars if the prisoner was ad-
judged to be an escaped slave, only five dollars if he was
declared free, so that a finding of slavery was to the com-
missioner's advantage. On one hand the law provided no
penalty for false claiming a freeman as a fugitive from
slavery, and on the other, it set a fine of $1000 and a prison
sentence of up to six months on anyone who sheltered an
alleged runaway or who helped him escape. Further, "all
good citizens" were commanded to "aid and assist in the
prompt and efficient execution" of the law.6

This measure, in short, stacked the cards in favor of
the claimant. It made every law-abiding citizen a poten-
tial slave-catcher, and it afforded not the slightest protec-
tion to the free Negro whom any slave-hunter cared to
seize. It was an open invitation to kidnaping.

The South, naturally enough, endorsed the new law
heartily, for it made the rendition of fugitive slaves more

96 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

certain and it guaranteed the preservation of slavery as
well.7 Such a law had been sought especially by the bor-
der states — Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland
— which adjoined the free states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and which had consequently lost
the greatest number of runaways to the Underground
Railroad. But if the states of the Deep South had lost
fewer bondmen, they were nonetheless in favor of the
new law.8

In the North, too, this measure found outspoken sup-
porters— among businessmen who had Southern connec-
tions, among persons of conservative mind, and among pol-
iticians who had strong partisan ties with their Southern
counterparts. Thus it was that a well-organized union
meeting was held in New Haven on October 24, 1850, to
endorse the new law as a gesture of loyalty to the Consti-
tution and to the "American System" — protection for the
South's cotton and slaves, a flow of raw materials for Con-
necticut's mills, a counterflow of manufactured goods back
to the plantation states. Addressing this meeting, the Rev-
erend N. W. Taylor of Yale declared that it was "lawful
to deliver up fugitives for the high, the great, the momen-
tous interests of the South." Another speaker, by no means
disagreeing, regretted that it might not be easy to live up
to all obligations : "We have made some underground rail-
roads— and have permitted it to be done — it is our duty
to prevent their establishment. But how? That's the ques-
tion. Alas, that property should take to itself wings and
fly away." In the end, the meeting produced a petition
stating that "any alteration of the Compromise Measures
adopted at the last Session of Congress is not only inex-
pedient, but that it is the duty of every good citizen of
this Republic to support and vindicate the same." Not less
than 1746 signatures were appended to this document.9

THIS PRETENDED LAW WE CANNOT OBEY

97

Within the next few months, Connecticut's major po-
litical parties expressed more or less similar views. In No-
vember, the Whigs took the position that though the Fugi-
tive Slave Law "was objectionable in some of its features
and ought to be modified," yet "the provisions of the
Constitution relative to delivering up fugitives were
binding." 10 In the following February, an assembly of
Democrats in Hartford stated its support of the law in un-
equivocally worded resolutions : "

That we regard the law in relation to fugitives from
service, as an act necessary to carry out the provision of
the Constitution on that subject, a provision of the Con-
stitution which is mandatory in its character, and which
was adopted by the unanimous vote of the Convention
which framed that instrument.

That we hold in undiminished veneration the Constitu-
tion of the United States — that we will abide in good
faith by all its compromises — and that we have no sym-
pathy with those who, to evade its provisions, appeal to a
"higher law" that teaches discord and disunion, and
sectional hatred, and the violation of that Constitution
under which this country has arrived at its present great-
ness and power.

Some of the state's newspapers also felt that the law
must be upheld and obeyed. Thus Hartford's Courant
stated editorially on October 19, 1850 : "Let us bear in
mind the language so lavishly bestowed upon the nullifiers
of the South. . . . All laws passed in constitutional form
must be obeyed until they are repealed. Any other course
is criminal, any other doctrine leads to direct anarchy." 12
And the New Haven Palladium, taking a moderate posi-
tion, found itself attacked by the same city's Register and
the Hartford Free Soil Republican, for opposite reasons.
First, the Palladium said on October 26 : 13

98 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

We regret to hear that a fugitive slave was arrested in
Boston, yesterday. An attempt was made to take two of
them, only one was captured. ... If it appear that he
is a fugitive we presume Bostonians will immediately raise
the requisite funds to purchase his freedom. The Garrison
men, however, it is probable will not contribute a penny
because [they are] too conscientious to appropriate it
for the purchase of a slave, for such an act, they say
would be recognizing the legality of the slave institution.
The poor slave, however, will doubtless be more thankful
for the practical benevolence that frees him than for that
which lives in a beautiful theory but brings forth no good
fruit.

This statement brought a prompt blast from Jesse G.
Baldwin, editor of the Free Soil Republican, who accused
the Palladium of "passive obedience" to the Fugitive Slave
Law.14 The Palladium answered with an accusation of its
own : 15

The abolitionists themselves are responsible for the in-
creased sufferings, and the present hard lot of the poor
slaves. . . . The fugitive slave law, itself, is a direct
consequence of the efforts of abolition kidnappers to
steal away the negroes from the service of their masters
— it is the abolitionist who exposed the fugitive in the
free states to imminent danger of being returned to
slavery.

Still trying to maintain a middle ground, the Palla-
dium now turned its fire on its proslavery contemporary,
the Register: 16

We are surprised at the Register's course in regard to
the fugitive slave law. Instead of uniting with other
presses, which advocate the maintenance of order, it
appears disposed to cavil even at a suggestion that the
law is not the most perfect thing ever devised in human

THIS PRETENDED LAW WE CANNOT OBEY

99

council. . . . One of its worst features is its retrospec-
tive or backward operation. If it had applied only to
slaves escaping after the passage of the Act, it would
not have been so cruel, nor have been in spirit, (we do
not say it is in fact) an ex-post-facto law. . . . The
fugitive slaves have, in good faith, settled and married
among us, when under other circumstances, they would
have settled in some other country where they would have
been safe. To break up families under such circumstances
is a grievous wrong.

That was too much for the Register to take in silence.
It promptly charged that the Palladium had "found an
ally in the New York Herald, in its deprecation of the de-
livering up fugitives." It then went on : 17

Suppose some one robs the editor of the Palladium of his
printing press, and through some flaw in the indictment
or the malice or prejudice of others, he is unable to
recover it — and that the Legislature should so amend
the law as to secure to our neighbor the certain protec-
tion of his property — and the thief should set up the
cry that it was an ex-post-facto law, and that he ought
to be allowed to keep what he had stolen, and only be
answerable for future delinquencies? Can the editor of
the Palladium say in his heart, that he would submit to
such a scoundrelly plea, or admit for an instant its
justice? Not he. It is no excuse to say that we at the
North hate slavery ; that there is a "higher law" than the
Constitution; that our sympathies are with the fugitives.

The basic division in views among Connecticut's jour-
nals, reflecting those of the state's citizens, was succinctly
expressed by two newspapers in Norwich. Said the Tri-
Weekly: "Repeal, repeal, repeal! Let not the slave catch-
ers pollute our soil!" To which the Aurora countered:
"Who is going to deliver the slave then? The Constitu-
tion must be upheld." 18

100 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

To many citizens, however, all this newspaper talk
seemed more a battle of wits than an exchange of mean-
ingful ideas. Holbrook Curtis, a "Conscience Whig" of
Watertown, put his finger on a crucial aspect of the law
and on the danger to which it might lead : "Our people at
the North will not all of them readily be made Slave
Catchers. I fear the folly and weakness of a few will be the
means of enticing a Civil War." 19

Selah Africanus of Hartford, speaking for Connecti-
cut's Negro community, saw both legal and moral objec-
tions to the act, which he said "violates the spirit and let-
ter of the Constitution, in the form and manner of seizures
and arrests, in its requirements upon good citizens, in im-
posing excessive fines, in crushing the Habeas Corpus, and
in depriving the person arrested of a trial by a jury of his
peers." Furthermore, he contended, "It contravenes the
Law of Nature, which is the foundation of all human laws,
and which, being dictated by the Almighty himself, is of
course superior in obligation to any other. Therefore, this
enactment of Congress is both unjust and unreasonable,
consequently becomes of no binding force, is null and void.
Let it be placed among the abominations !" 20

Connecticut's abolitionists, naturally, were not slow to
express their opposition. Meeting in Hartford in early
October, they filled American Hall to more than capacity.
Speaking to this group, A. M. Collins expressed their po-
sition and purpose in a firm and explicit manner : 21

We sympathize with the fugitive from southern slavery
in our own community, and with all such as in a manly
and courageous spirit, are thus achieving their own free-
dom, that we will give them shelter, food, and clothing as
deserving objects of our charity, and that we will use
our utmost endeavors to secure to them the enjoyment of
the scanty privileges left to them by law.

THIS PRETENDED LAW WE CANNOT OBEY

101

The Reverend George W. Perkins of Meriden, whose
opinion of slavery had been made clear in his resolutions
laid before the General Association of Congregational
Ministers five years earlier, could not remain silent in the
face of this new fugitive slave bill, reflecting as it did the
power and determination of the slavocracy. Even before
the measure became law, he had preached an almost inflam-
matory sermon at Guilford, under the title "Conscience
and the Constitution." In this address, he set forth the
view that the citizen was bound to obey two rightful au-
thorities, the Constitution of the United States and the
law of God ; "but in case of conflict between the authority
of the U. S. and the authority of God, obey God and dis-
obey the United States." This, he said, was in effect the
position taken by martyrs and reformers in all ages. "The
early Christians were all lawbreakers — the Puritans were
lawbreakers — our Pilgrim fathers were lawbreakers — our
revolutionary fathers were lawbreakers." The friends of
the fugitives therefore, bearing in mind the precept "Let
the oppressed go free . . . betray not him that wander-
eth," were and must be lawbreakers too.22 Now that the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a reality, Perkins pre-
sided over a protest meeting at Middletown. Pointing out
that the Bible speaks "the heartiest and most incendiary
language of rebuke to the slaveholder," he drove through
a resolution declaring that the law was unconstitutional,
because it was contrary to the law of God and because it
forbade upright citizens "to render the common offices of
humanity to those who are escaping from bondage." 23

Other churchmen than Perkins considered the new law
odious. The Methodist Missionary Society, meeting in New
London, condemned its "barefaced hypocrisy" in denying
the fugitive the right of trial by jury while allowing "his
claimant this privilege in the most unlimited manner." The

102 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

meeting resolved to show resistance to tyrants and obedi-
ence to God, and to use "all lawful means for the repeal of
this most atrocious and infamous law." 2i

It remained for the farmers of Middlefield, however, to
state the case as the plain people saw it. Meeting under the
leadership of William Lyman, they put the basic issues
into the simplest terms, and they stated the only conclusion
a self-respecting freeman could reach. This is the resolu-
tion they adopted : 25

This Fugitive Slave Law commands all good citizens to
be slave-catchers : good citizens cannot be slave-catchers
any more than light can be darkness. You tell us, the
Union will be endangered if we oppose this law. We reply
that greater things than the Union will be endangered,
if we submit to it : Conscience, Humanity, Self-Respect
are greater than the Union, and these must be pursued
at all hazards. This pretended law commands us to with-
hold food and raiment and shelter from the most needy
— we cannot obey.

This resolution was indicative of the rising tide of
righteous indignation that swept Connecticut in the wake
of the 1850 law.26 The members of the General Assembly
were not slow to hear the rumblings from the grass roots,
and in a matter of months they expressed their opinion.
The resolution they adopted admitted that Congress had
the right to legislate concerning "delivering up of fugi-
tives," but it maintained that Connecticut itself had the
right to grant alleged runaways a fair trial by jury.27 A
few years thereafter, with Free Soil men sitting among its
members, the Assembly enacted a new personal liberty law,
under the title "An Act for the Defense of Liberty in this
State." Adopted in 1854, the measure provided a fine of
$5000 and five years' imprisonment for anyone who falsely

THIS PRETENDED LAW WE CANNOT OBEY

103

swore that any free Negro was a fugitive slave.28 Other
acts forbade public officials to aid in the apprehension of
alleged runaways; provided for jury trials; and required
two witnesses to support any testimony as to services due.29
Thus it became clear that, no matter what some segments
of its press and its business population might think, official
Connecticut meant both to make the work of the slave-
hunter difficult and to protect the state's free Negroes.

In view of the sweeping privileges granted to slave-
catchers, the colored people of the North indeed needed
protection. Beginning in the autumn of 1850 a great Ne-
gro exodus, set off' by the Fugitive Slave Law, saw "thou-
sands of people of color crossing over into Canada" from
all the Northern states between the Atlantic and the Mis-
souri River, while thousands more moved from one state to
another. In the next decade, the Negro population of Brit-
ish North America increased by 50 per cent, from "about
40,000 to nearly 60,000." 30 The flight from Connecticut
had started by mid-October, when five persons left Hart-
ford bound for Canada.31 Even the Connecticut Coloni-
zation Society, despite its earlfer proslavery leanings,
played an important role at this time. Under its auspices,
in 1851, the barque Zeno carried twenty Connecticut Ne-
groes to Liberia — double the number that had left the
state for Africa in all the years from 1820 to 1850. 32

How many fugitive slaves were living in Connecticut at
this time it is impossible to determine. Census returns for
1850 show a Negro population of 7693 — some 400 fewer
than a decade earlier — of whom 6244 were natives of the
state.33 But no figures are available to show how many of
the remaining 1449 Negroes were freemen from other
states, how many runaway slaves. A paragraph in a Mid-
dletown newspaper, however, suggests what was probably
the general situation : 34

104 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

This law is creating great excitement in many sections of
our neighborhood. The number of fugitives is many more
than was suspected. Hundreds have come north, settled
down and reared families. They have become respectable
and useful members of the community, and have acquired
a large circle of acquaintances and friends. None can
see them arrested by strangers on the testimony of
strangers, and carried to bondage without strongly
interested feelings.

The Fugitive Slave Law touched even the small, self-
sufficient village of Deep River, where William Winters
had been living for two decades. Now, "because it was
known that Massachusetts was more friendly to escaped
slaves than Connecticut," he made his way to New Bed-
ford. There he remained for a dozen years or more, not re-
turning to Deep River until President Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation.36

The effect of the new law on James Lindsey Smith was
even more dramatic. For seven years he had been a resident
of Norwich, earning his living as a shoemaker and giving
antislavery lectures throughout southern New England.
Now the fear of recapture seized him, and he was "haunted
by dreams which were so vivid as to appear really true." In
one of these nightmares, he dreamed that his owner had
come for him and had taken him back to Virginia. His wife,
when he told her the story in the morning, was even more
upset than he, for she believed in dreams. Smith went to his
shop that day in a thoroughly disturbed state of mind.
And in mid-morning, as he glanced through a shop window
at the passengers just off the Norwich- Worcester train,
whom did he see — or so he thought — but the former master
himself! The shoemaker was, he confessed, "pretty well
frightened out of my wits. What to do I did not know. This
man certainly walked like him, had whiskers like him; in

THIS PRETENDED LAW WE CANNOT OBEY

105

fact, his whole general appearance resembled him so much
that I was sure he had been put on my track. I peeped out
at him as he passed my door and saw him go up the steps
leading to the office of the U. S. Marshal, then I was sure
he had come for me. I could do no more work that day."

All day Smith lurked in his shop, telling his fears to
customers who came in. And they showed themselves to be
not only customers but friends. Despite the ready services
of the Underground Railroad, they advised him not to
leave Norwich. One man offered him a revolver in case he
needed to defend himself, for Smith was "determined never
to be taken back alive." Another went to the United States
marshal to ask what he would do if he were required to seize
Smith as a fugitive ; and the officer replied that he would
resign his post rather than comply with that demand. A
third customer, the town crier, checked the register of
every hotel "to see if a man by the name of Lackey was
registered there" ; it was night before he reported that no
such name could be found. Smith was safe in Norwich, but
it was a long time before the effects of his horrible dream
wore away.36

Thus the people of Norwich, by their readiness to help
a threatened fugitive, showed how little regard they had
for the Fugitive Slave Law, how determined they were to
frustrate its operations and to assure freedom for the run-
away. All over the state — all over the North — the general
reaction was the same. Devout abolitionists, for many of
whom their cause had the aspect of a divinely sanctioned
crusade, felt the new law to be "offensive in the sight of
God." Many ordinary citizens, not heretofore active in the
movement, viewed it in the same light. With the fugitive's
need for help now much greater than it had been, he found
more and more people ready to assist him in his flight, more
and more places where he could obtain rest and succor on

106 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

the road to freedom. Effective as it had been, the Under-
ground Railroad now found its traffic greatly increased, in
some areas as much as tenfold.37 This was, perhaps, the last
result that the framers of the Compromise of 1850 had ex-
pected, but it was what happened — conclusive evidence, if
any were needed, that the Middlefield farmers echoed a
general sentiment in their ringing pronouncement: "This
pretended law we cannot obey."

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NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY
FROM THE SEA

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 gave the Under-
ground Railroad its greatest impetus ; but the lay of
the land, together with the disposition of cities and villages,
determined the main routes into and through Connecticut.
Unlike Pennsylvania and the states along the north bank
of the Ohio River, the Nutmeg State had no common border
with any territory where slavery was legal. Fugitives trav-
eling overland had to come in through either New York
from the west or Rhode Island from the east; a network
of routes, entering from both directions, brought the run-
away into and through Connecticut on his way northward
to freedom. But the coast of Long Island Sound and the
central artery of the Connecticut River offered a number
of entry points for those who came by water.

To any slave who could find his way to a Southern
seaport, the ocean offered an opportunity for escape. As
William Grimes found early in the century, many Yankee
sailors and captains "forgot to be microscopic in the in-
spection of their craft." A runaway who could steal aboard
an outbound ship and hide himself among the cotton bales
might well rest undisturbed — though perhaps not unseen
— for the duration of the voyage to some Northern port.

107

108 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

He might, like Grimes, find that a space had been left
vacant for him when the cargo was stowed ; that the crew
supplied him with food and water; that they helped him
get safely ashore when the journey's end was reached.1

Some of the vessels that thus transported hidden cargo
were owned and sailed by Northern Negroes who had reg-
ular connections with the Underground Railroad. In other
cases, it appears that the carrying of a fugitive was a
matter of chance or of the inclination of an individual
ship's officer or crew member. At any rate, organized or
not, the number of escapes by sea was sufficient to arouse
the South to preventive measures. Thus in 1854 South
Carolina enacted a law to the effect that "all coloured men,
free-born British subjects and others, are liable to be
seized on board of vessels entering, and to be imprisoned
on landing in any of the ports of this State, even though
they may be driven into them by stress of weather." This
measure further provided that such seamen were "liable to
be sold into Slavery if they were unable to pay the jail
fees." 2

Slaves who fled from the South by sea might go on a
vessel bound for Europe, but the greater number arrived
at such Northern ports as Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston. Connecticut's focus for this traffic was New Haven.
That city housed a devoted band of abolitionists, and it
became an important center of Underground Railroad
activity, as both terminus and forwarding point. Inbound
fugitives entered the city by sea or overland from the direc-
tion of New York. For those going farther, a principal
route led eastward to Deep River ; another, with alternate
branches, had Farmington as its goal. But New Haven
itself was journey's end for a number of fugitives, who
had been coming in and settling since the days of William
Grimes.

NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY FROM THE SEA 109

In the decades before the Civil War, the city expanded
rapidly. Its population, less than 15,000 in 1840, grew to
more than 20,000 by 1850 and 39,000 by I860.3 It had an
interesting variety of racial groups. There were Scots
weavers in the carpet mills, while English, French, Welsh,
and German immigrant laborers nocked to the carriage
factories. The Irish, "with bellicose energy," built the four
railroads that entered New Haven, and there were Ger-
man Jews who, with thrift and ambition, prospered in
merchandising establishments.4

For the city's Negroes, for the most part just emerg-
ing from slavery either in the South or in Connecticut
itself, job opportunities were not numerous. Many worked
as manual laborers, many more as domestic servants. A
small but notable group made their mark as barbers. Few
Germans were trained in this profession, and no one would
"let a wild Irishman approach his face with a razor in
his hand." William Grimes had followed this trade, and his
friend "Barber" Thompson, also a fugitive slave, was
known as "the greatest barber in America." Following the
tradition set by them, Negroes constituted all the barbers
there were in New Haven in 1840 and "two thirds of the
whole dozen barbers" in 1850. 5

Despite the comparative prosperity of the barbers, a
proportion of the city's Negro inhabitants were beset by
the evils of poverty — poor and ill-lighted housing, too
often in cellars ; overcrowding ; and as a result, moral
laxity. Missionary societies worked hard to better the lot
of these unfortunates. Hannah Gray, a Negro mission
worker, was especially diligent in collecting money for the
underprivileged slum-dwellers and for the support of fugi-
tives who had gone on to Canada. Funds for this purpose
were promptly sent to the Canadian Missionary Society, as
were other gifts — for example, a barrel of Bibles and

110 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

household goods from the New Haven Juvenile Society in
1852.6

Another zealous friend was the Reverend Simeon S.
Jocelyn, founder (in 1828) and first pastor of the city's
original house of worship for colored people, the Temple
Street Church. Unfortunately, his plan for a "Collegiate
school on the manual labor system" for Negroes was
wrecked on the rocks of public opposition in 1831. He was
one of the founders of the New Haven Anti-Slavery
Society, which by 1837 had fifty members with Mrs. Lei-
cester Sawyer as secretary. Runaway slaves could always
look for spiritual and material help from this group ; for
Jocelyn, in addition to his other activities, was a devoted
Underground manager.7

His brother Nathaniel Jocelyn, the artist who painted
Cinque's portrait and stood ready to release the Amistad
captives from jail by force, was also an active agent of
the Underground Railroad. His commodious house shel-
tered many a fleeing bondsman, although only his inti-
mates knew of it. In fact, he and Mrs. Jocelyn, as host
and hostess, served and protected Underground travelers
throughout the day "without telling the children who their
guests might be." 8

Another faithful Undergrounder was the Reverend
Samuel W. S. Dutton, pastor of New Haven's North
Church. His home at 113 College Street was an established
station. Fugitives who went to him were directed to rap
in a peculiar, gentle way on his kitchen door ; whereupon
those Negroes already in the house were expected to admit
the newcomers, "usually two but sometimes one." These
runaway guests were provided with a place to wash and a
good meal. They were then taken to the attic, "where they
slept all day on beds provided for them." At night, after
another meal, they were concealed under the load in a hay
wagon and sent on their way.9

NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY FROM THE SEA 111

Other known agents were Amos Townsend, cashier of
the New Haven Bank, and the Reverend Henry Ludlow.
In this city, too, Roger S. Baldwin first demonstrated his
sympathy with the runaway slave. One of his earliest cases,
just after he had begun the practice of law, involved a
matter of this kind. An alleged fugitive in New Haven had
been seized, bound, and hauled aboard a vessel "to be taken
to New York and Kentucky." One of the man's friends
went to Baldwin in great anxiety and asked him to handle
the case. The young lawyer, despite pressures against him,
at once obtained a writ of habeas corpus and brought the
accused before a judge of the Superior Court for a hear-
ing. Since Baldwin was able to establish conclusive^ that
"there was no legal evidence that the man was a fugitive
slave," he won his case and the prisoner was released.10
From this start, Baldwinwent on to represent the Amistad
captives before the United States District and Supreme
Courts ; to serve as governor of Connecticut ; and to sit for
his state in the United States Senate.

Among these Underground leaders of New Haven, not
least was the Reverend Amos G. Beman, first Negro minis-
ter of the Temple Street Church. Arriving in 1838 from
Hartford, where he had been a teacher in a school for
colored children, he noted in his diary : "This day I landed
in this city from Hartford — how long I shall stay, I know
not. Resolved that I will, while in this city, endeavor to
glorify God — and seek the good of immortal soul." He
soon became a zealous manager of the New Haven Vig-
ilance Committee and an agent of the Underground Rail-
road. The full range of his activities in the latter capacity
is not a matter of record, but he described one instance
as follows : X1

On the sixth instant [January 1851], we had the pleasure
of receiving and sending on her way an interesting pas-

112 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

senger from the land of chains and whips by the under-
ground railroad — notwithstanding it was said by one of
the orators in the Union Meeting that "we have made
some underground railroads — and permitted it to be
done — it is our duty to prevent their establishment."
But who will blot out the North Star?

Beginning in that same year, Beman submitted many
reports on activities in New Haven to The Voice of the
Fugitive, an antislavery newspaper published in Detroit.
In these writings, he frequently made use of cryptic phrases
— "concert of the enslaved" for the Underground Rail-
road, "our friends" for fugitive slaves. He discussed at
length the Colonization Society of Connecticut, maintain-
ing that it was haunted by the "increase of the colored
population to the white" but adding that, as a result of
the recent territorial acquisitions from Mexico and of the
vastly increased flow of immigrants from Ireland and Ger-
many, "the growth of the colored population could not
keep apace to the whites." He saw New Haven's newly
arrived Negroes beginning to put down permanent roots : 12

Within a few months several of our friends have pur-
chased real estate and paid for it. Several who have never
taken any interest in this matter have shown praiseworthy
zeal to secure for themselves a Home. Many "Elevation
Meetings" are held in order that they may voluntarily
testify to trials and tribulations of their bondage.

He saw, too, that despite all obstacles, the cause of
abolition was making headway among New Haven's cit-
izens as the full implications of the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850 sank deeper into public consciousness : 13

The free soil vote has increased considerable in this city
— and the monthly "concert of the enslaved" and the
nominally free, the flying fugitive, and for the happiness

NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY FROM THE SEA 113

and prosperity of those, who have found a home in Can-
ada— every month, it increases in interest and promises
to continue so for some time.

Beman was a true prophet. The "free soil vote" grew
throughout the state to the point that, in 1856, Connect-
icut's six electoral votes went to the newly formed, anti-
slavery Republican Party. Nonetheless, there were many
who looked on abolitionists and Undergrounders as "an
inflammatory group stirring up trouble and perhaps en-
dangering the Union." Some of the citizens had profitable
business connections with Southern planters, who were
good customers for the locally made wagons and carriages.
Some had pleasant social relations with Southern boys at
Yale, with their sisters in New Haven schools, and with
their families who came North to spend the summer on
the shores of Long Island Sound.14 A larger number, per-
haps, opposed anything that smacked of abolition for
more deep-seated and more sinister reasons, of which New
Haven was said to afford a classic example : 15

They disliked or pretended to dislike slavery ; but they
thought that, "seeing there was a law" against helping
fugitive slaves on their way, the law should be obeyed.
But the opposition in that state to the business of the
Underground road sprang also from the imbred hatred
of many people of the state for the negro. This hatred
had come down from former generations. It had been
carefully kept through all the stages of its transmission ;
it had been fostered with the fondness given a favorite
child ; it had been guarded as a precious treasure ; it had
been prized as a sacred jewel.

George Beckwith, teacher and member of the Baptist
Church, encountered a direct example of such prejudice.
A colored lady of New Haven approached him and asked

114 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

if he would teach her sons, to which he readily agreed. As
soon as his decision became known, he was met everywhere
with sidelong glances and "significant frowns," but his
purpose remained unaltered. Then, within forty-eight
hours after he had admitted the Negro boys to his school,
he was visited by a group of parents — including some of
his fellow parishioners — who demanded an explanation.
Beckwith would not admit that any explanation was
needed, and this refusal led to a threat. If he did not dis-
miss the colored boys, these parents would withdraw their
own sons. Undaunted, the teacher suggested that that
would be the best alternative.16

Against such a background, the Underground Rail-
road operators went on with their work, receiving their
"friends" and passing them along to agents in nearby
communities. Outbound routes from New Haven radiated
north, northeast, and east; stationmasters used alternate
lines as circumstances at the given moment indicated was
best. Conveyances were not always available for the pas-
sengers, and as a result — whenever it was deemed wise —
some of them walked the distance to the next station.

The route eastward from New Haven followed the
Old Stage Road and led to Deep River or Chester, where
the fugitive might find refuge with Deacon George Read
or with Judge Ely Warner and his son Jonathan. Along
the way he might find help in Guilford; its antislavery
society had 123 members, and the pastor of its Congrega-
tional church, the Reverend Mr. Dutton, was an outspoken
abolitionist. Too outspoken, in fact, to be continuously
useful to the cause; since he insisted on employing his
church building for antislavery meetings, the trustees dis-
missed him from his pastorate.17

The main Underground line from New Haven ran
northward to Farmington by either of two alternate routes.

NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY FROM THE SEA 115

Fugitives who traveled on foot occasionally lost their way,
wandering off in the direction of Plymouth. Those who
had better directions or who journeyed under the care of
a conductor might follow the main line through Meriden
or the side road by way of Southington.18

On the Southington branch, Carlos Curtiss was a most
active worker. Bearded, energetic, and persistent, he
looked what he was — a farmer and a rugged individualist.
Many a day he drove his full hay wagon over the dirt
road to New Haven; many a night he made the return
journey with dark passengers concealed beneath the load.
Back at his farm on the South End Road, the fugitives
were fed a good meal by Mrs. Curtiss. They then went
to the barn, where a trap door in the floor opened into a
cellar six feet deep and ten feet square. Once his guests
were ensconced in this hideout, Curtiss rolled his wagon
over the trap door to hide it from curious neighbors. With
straw for their beds, the runaways remained in the little
cellar until evening returned. Then they were ready for
another ride. Again they concealed themselves under the
wagonload of hay; again Curtiss hitched up a team and
drove through the darkness; and on this second leg of
the trip, he took his charges all the way to Farmington.
Thus it was that, night after night, this determined Con-
necticut farmer went about "the work his conscience told
him was right." 19

On this westernmost route from New Haven, there were
other Southington citizens who kept the traffic moving.
In after years, Martin Frisbie recalled "a colored farer
toward freedom who was lodged and fed in a house by his
older brother and their mother" under rather risky cir-
cumstances. Nearby lived an uncle "who kind though he
was to his deceased brother's widow and sons, would have
informed officers of the law against them had he suspected

116 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

them of harboring a fugitive negro." Knowing this man's
attitude, and remembering the fine of $1000 to which they
would be liable for helping a runaway, the Frisbies were
somewhat hesitant when a weary fugitive came to their
house and appealed for help. Mother and older son con-
ferred, and their "humane feelings conquered their fears."
They decided to take the risk and shelter the man; and
they warned Martin not to say anything about it to the
uncle. Thus harbored and fed fqr several days, the run-
away was sent on his way to Farmington.20

Despite the activity of Carlos Curtiss on the South-
ington line, most of the fugitives who left New Haven
were taken or sent on the branch that ran through Mer-
iden. Their first way station was North Guilford, where
the Reverend Zolva Whitmore, the Congregational min-
ister, directed the Underground work of the Bartletts and
others of his parishioners. An incident of his activity was
told years after the event :

Those still living remember that one Sunday evening he
helped a darkey on his way to the next station, carrying
him concealed in a load of hay on a farm wagon. The
Whitmores and their antislavery friends were strict ob-
servers of the Sabbath. But they doubtless thought that
aiding a fugitive slave on his way toward freedom was
one of the "acts of necessity and mercy" that were
allowed even by the most Puritanical of Sabbatarians.
One of the minister's daughters asked her mother : "What
is papa going off with that load of hay Sunday night
for?" And the answer was: "Daughter, please don't ask
any questions." The girl when grown was informed of the
meaning of this Sunday evening hay carting.

By no means all of Whitmore's flock approved of his
Underground labors. Finally, after twenty-five years of
service, he was compelled to resign his pastorate. He then
removed to Massachusetts, where he labored "a score of

NEW HAVEN, GATEWAY FROM THE SEA 117

years, dying at a good old age, esteemed by all who knew
him and respected there and by his antislavery friends in
Connecticut for what he did for the oppressed." 21

The path of the runaway led northwest from North
Guilford to Meriden, where there were at least three sta-
tions. One of these was the home of Levi Yale, "a man of
very pronounced views against slavery, and one who had
the courage of his convictions." The oldest of a number of
children whose father died early, he was running his
mother's farm before he was thirteen ; from the age of six-
teen he supported the family by teaching in winter and
farming in summer. In time, he served his town and state
as first selectman and as a member of the General Assem-
bly. Many runaways, it was said, found "food and harbor"
at his farmhouse. In the center of town, Homer Curtiss
and Harlowe Isbell conducted an Underground station in
their lock shop, where they sheltered the fugitives Eldridge
and Jones among others. But perhaps the most effective
agent in Meriden was that fiery advocate of immediate
emancipation, the Reverend George W. Perkins.22

Through the decade 1844-1854, this dedicated min-
ister of the Congregational Church often secreted fugi-
tives in the attic of his house or in his barn. According to
the later recollections of his daughter Frances, most of
these were men or boys, but some were women. She remem-
bered other details too : 23

My aunt, Miss Frances Perkins (1839-1918) used to tell
me that as a child she remembered "a black face peering in
the window" and then disappearing. She also told of
hearing how her father harnessed his horse himself in
the night and drove away, returning some time next day.
I have no idea where the next station was located, but it
would seem very likely to be in the neighborhood of Hart-
ford— a three hour drive from Meriden with a good horse.
I understand that escaped slaves were generally made

118 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

comfortable in some out-house or stable in order to make
escape more possible in case of search.

The stop to which Perkins took his passengers prob-
ably was the way station operated by Milo Hotchkiss in
Kensington. A few miles beyond it the "Stanley Quarters,"
in the northern part of New Britain, formed a more impor-
tant center. Here many active Undergrounders were ready
to succor the fleeing fugitive — DeWitt C. Pond, Alfred
Andrews, David Whittlesey, the Henry Norths, the Stan-
leys, the Harts, and the Horace Booths.24 New Britain, in
fact, was a long-time center of antislavery activity. Mrs.
Minerva Lee Hart was "an abolitionist before there was
an antislavery society" ; and when her husband and others
were mobbed for their opinions, she saw the event as a
proof that "God was bringing one of His mighty human
problems to solution." 25 Many other citizens of the town
"joined the movement headed by William Lloyd Garrison,
in violent opposition to the principles of slavery, no matter
what the difficulties of settling the question." 26

Some of these devoted Undergrounders suffered for
their convictions and actions. On a night in October 1857,
Mrs. Henry North's barn was set on fire by incendiaries ;
the flames consumed the building with twenty tons of hay
and several sleighs and wagons, and George Hart, who was
inside at the time, had to run for his life. At the same time
the barn of Horace Booth, with forty to fifty tons of hay,
was destroyed by an arsonist fire. Rewards were offered
for the apprehension of the perpetrators, but it is not on
record that they were ever caught.27

But no threats, no violence, deterred the workers for
human freedom. As long as there was need of their services,
they continued to receive passengers from down the line
and to forward them to the center of Connecticut's Under-
ground network. That center was Farmington.

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TRUNK LINES

While some fugitives entered Connecticut from the
sea, at New Haven or another port, the majority
came by overland routes. Pennsylvania, whose southern
border was the Mason-Dixon line, received thousands of
runaways from the contiguous states of Virginia, Mary-
land, and Delaware; and Philadelphia, with its large
Quaker population and its long-established Underground
apparatus, became a most important haven and forward-
ing station for refugees from slavery. Between 1830 and
1860, more than 9000 slaves are said to have been helped
on their way to freedom in that city.1 A great proportion
of these were sent on, by rail or steamer or road, to New
York City, where the Vigilance Committee, in existence by
1835 and operated mainly by Negroes, gave them protec-
tion and help. The Reverend Amos Beman, who addressed
this group at one of its anniversary meetings, summarized
its role in the work of the Underground Railroad : 2

Those who come with fear and trembling and apply for
aid, are flying from the cruel prison house — the dark
land of their unpaid toil — the ground stained with their
blood and wet with their bitter tears — they have jour-
neyed with scant food, guided by the pale light of the

120 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

North Star — the sombre night has been their day — the
cold damp earth their cheerless bed — the dreary day has
been full of danger and alarm — every stirring leaf spoke
to them of the slavehunter — every sound told them of the
bloodhound. . . . At this point, this Committee find
them tormented by overwhelming anxiety. . . . To stay
here would be to be in a state of continual jeopardy —
for this is the slavecatcher's hunting ground ; and it is for
such persons, thus situated, that this committee asks your
efficient aid in shielding the flying slave.

The flow of fugitives through New York was constant,
and constantly increasing. The Reverend Charles B. Ray,
one of the Vigilance Committee's outstanding Negro
workers, reported that "more than four hundred persons,
escaped from slavery" came into the city during the year
1849; and after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law
of 1850, the place "became more active than ever in receiv-
ing and forwarding" the runaways.3

From Manhattan, fugitives journeyed farther by any
one of several means, going in any one of several direc-
tions. Some voyaged by boat to New England ports— New
Haven, Hartford, and others. Some went across the East
River to Long Island, where there were points of refuge.
Many followed the_I£uilsQn._Riyer northward, by a route
whose branches might take them straight to Montreal, or
westward through Central New York and across Lake
Ontario to the region of Kingston, or eastward via a num-
ber of laterals into Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Ver-
mont. Still others traveled the path of William Grimes,
northeast along the Sound shore and so across the state
line at Greenwich.4

Those who came by this route found protection at the
Underground station operated by Benjamin Daskam in
Stamford. He had several different hiding places at his

WEST CONNECTICUT TRUNK LINES 121

disposal, to be used as discretion indicated; he once con-
cealed a runaway in a neighbor's barn, while another was
secreted in the belfry of the Presbyterian church. He acted
as a conductor also, taking his charges in a hay wagon to
a man named Weed in Darien.5

East of Darien, there was a station in Norwalk, but
who operated it remains unknown. It may have been the
house of David Lambert, which had a secret stairway from
beneath the gambrel roof to a dark cellar, from which in
turn a tunnel — literally underground — led to a nearby
salt-box house. This building is believed to have been used
as a hideaway for freedom-bound fugitives.6 It is logical
to suppose that, from this point, some runaways followed
the Sound to New Haven, but the locations of stations
along this route, and the names of their proprietors, have
not come to light.

A known route took the refugee north from Norwalk to
Wilton, where William Wakeman was an earnest aboli-
tionist and active Undergrounder for many years. In the
late 1830's he invited the Reverend Nathaniel Colver, the
touring antislavery lecturer, to speak at his house before
"immense crowds." He was still at his work for the en-
slaved, with redoubled effort, after the Fugitive Slave Law
of 1850 was adopted.

Wakeman was both station-keeper and conductor. He
was in touch by mail with other LTnderground operators,
who sent him coded letters announcing the arrival of pas-
sengers— sometimes as many as five or six in a single party.
He gave them lodging and food ; when the neighbors saw
him "carrying wood to the guest chamber and Mrs. Wake-
man carrying trays of her best food, they knew that dur-
ing the dark hours of the preceding night one or more
dusky guest had arrived." As a conductor, Wakeman was
bold and tireless, taking his "packages of hardware and

122 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

dry goods" to places as distant as Plymouth and Middle-
town — trips of forty and fifty miles as the crow flies,
farther than that by road. For this purpose, he sometimes
used a hay wagon and traveled by night; at other times
he openly worked on the dangerous day shift. One local
historian reported on his activities in the following rough
notes :

Anti-slavery underground railroad. There is no stowaway
in cellar. Wm. Wakeman helped the fugitives openly. One
man he afterwards heard of arrived in Canada and doing
well. He drove away one man and 2 women in broad day-
light, black as they could be — to another station in Ply-
mouth . . . was merely threatened for his duty but never
molested.7

It is possible, though it is not verified, that some of
Wakeman's trips went no farther than Waterbury, where
Deacon Timothy Porter and J. M. Stocking both main-
tained Underground stations. The Plymouth operators, to
whom Wakeman presumably made his deliveries, included
Joel Blakeslee, Ferrand Dunbar, and William Bull. They
not only handled passengers from Wilton ; they also had
to keep watch for unaccompanied fugitives on foot who
had lost their way on the western line between New Haven
and Farmington. The Plymouth "minute men" had to set
these wanderers on the right track, which took them a
dozen miles eastward to Farmington.8

In addition to the lines out of Wilton, western Con-
necticut had other Underground Railroad tracks which it
is not possible to trace in their entirety. The locations of
stations and the names of their keepers spring easily to
view ; not so the names of the conductors or the routes that
were followed. Indeed the routes themselves, in this area as
throughout the North, were constantly changing; new

WEST CONNECTICUT TRUNK LINES 123

branches were opened and old ones closed, tracks shifted
and stations relocated, as convenience and safety might
dictate.

Thus it is known that New Milford was a center of
Underground work; but whether fugitives came to this
town by traveling northward from the vicinity of Wilton,
or eastward via a lateral from the Hudson River line in
New York, or both, remains unclear.9 In any case, the
sins of colonial slavery in the area "were somewhat atoned
for in after years by the zeal of Abolitionists in aiding run-
aways to reach Canada and freedom." There were several
stations here, one of which was the house of Charles Sabin.
Another was the home of Augustine Thayer. He and "his
good wife devoted their lives to the Abolition cause. They
helped many poor slaves on their way, rising from their
beds in the night to feed and minister to them and secret-
ing them till they could be taken under cover of darkness
to Deacon Gerardus Roberts' house on Second Hill and
from there to Mr. Daniel Piatt's in Washington." 10

Among the first real abolitionists of Washington was
Frederick W. Gunn, who in 1837 opened a private school
in the village. The project was not successful. Many cit-
izens felt that he would infect his scholars with his well-
known antislavery views, for which he was the target of
much criticism. The local minister "thundered against
him from the pulpit, excommunicated him." In the face of
this opposition, Gunn left the town and accepted a teach-
ing post in Pennsylvania. In the same year, Abby Kelly,
a noted abolitionist speaker of the Quaker faith, visited
Washington. While sojourning there and delivering anti-
slavery lectures, she met the sort of heckling that greeted
most women who spoke in the abolitionist cause. The same
local minister hurled invectives at her in his Sunday ser-
mons ; he described her as a second Jezebel, who "calleth

124 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

herself a prophetess, to teach, and to seduce my servants to
commit fornication." Coming to the point, he concluded,
"Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is
not permitted unto them to speak." Miss Kelly, "fair,
comely, and of the noblest character," left Washington
for good. But several years later, when the local climate
of opinion was more favorable to abolitionists, Gunn
returned to his native village and founded The Gunnery —
a school, he said, to make men of boys, where the most
important subject was "self -direction and self-govern-
ment." The direction of runaways on the road to freedom,
however, remained Gunn's private affair.11

Despite this educator's good work, that of Daniel
Piatt and his wife was more important. They, with a few
others who were concerned over the slavery issue, "were
the centre of a storm of persecution by which less heroic
souls would have been overwhelmed." Nonetheless they
persevered, accommodating "many a trembling black refu-
gee" on their farm. Their son Orville — who lived to serve
twenty-six years in the United States Senate — later
recalled that "the slaves stayed, as a rule, but a short
time, though some remained several weeks until it was
learned through the channels of communication among
Abolitionists that their whereabouts was suspected." They
were then forwarded to either of two destinations — to Dr.
Vaill on the Wolcottville Road or to Uriel Tuttle in Tor-
rington.12

The latter town was something of a center of anti-
slavery sentiment. It was the birthplace of the abolitionist
firebrand and martyr, John Brown. Its antislavery society
had forty members as early as 1837 ; and it was said that,
when this body held its initial meeting in a barn, it "was
not the first time that strangers found shelter there because
there was no room in the inn." Yet, curiously, Uriel Tuttle

WEST CONNECTICUT TRUNK LINES 125

was the only Underground stationmaster here of whom a
record survives.13

At Winchester, a few miles north of Torrington and
close to Winsted, there was a small but active antislavery
society. Noble J. Everett was its secretary ; Jonathan Coe,
a member who lived in nearby Winsted, managed a well-
patronized Underground station at his house.14 Another
station may have been the home of Silas H. McAlpine,
poet, philanthropist, and abolitionist of Winchester; in
the foundation wall of his house was a hidden crypt that
was possibly a hiding place for fugitives, but there is no
positive evidence that it was so used.13 Notwithstanding
these few records, there is reason to believe that the two
toAvns formed a busy jumping off point for the fugitive.
A local historian who had lived in the era of Underground
activity later wrote that "antislavery sentiment had become
more pervasive and incisive in our town than in any other
in Western Connecticut before the outbreak of the rebel-
lion." 16 Parker Pillsbury, visiting the area in the early
1850's, felt the pulsation of that sentiment: 1T

After two weeks of wandering over a desert of pro-
slavery indifference and hostility, a spot such as Winsted
is a real oasis, a "Delectable Mountains" resting place to
an anti-slavery agent. Almost every where, there will be
one family to give me a good and welcome home ; but
beyond that, in Connecticut, we need not look for sym-
pathy and support, except in very few and rare instances.
In Winsted, there is a little band of chosen spirits.
Their love to God is manifested not by reverencing holy
days, holy houses, or holy ministers, but by acts of
benevolence and humanity to his suffering children. They
are mostly hard laboring mechanics, eating none but the
bread of patient industry ; and they are a noble example
of what working men and women can and ought to be.

126 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

... In short, they constitute one of the most gallant
and valuable auxilliaries in our warfare to be found any
where in New England.

Beyond this point, there were stations to the north in
Colebrook and to the northwest in Norfolk. Who were the
Underground agents in Colebrook remains unknown, but
there were certainly several of them. One may have been
J. H. Rodgers, secretary of the ninety-member antislavery
society in 1836. But if the names of the agents have been
forgotten, word-of -mouth tradition has preserved the loca-
tion of several of the stations they used. It is also reported
that there was a network of Underground byways in this
vicinity and that residents of Norfolk were responsible
for paving many of them.18

Norfolk had been hospitable to runaway slaves as far
back as the 1790's, when more than a dozen different cit-
izens had cooperated in sheltering young James Mars and
his family. Even in the 1850's there were old-timers in the
village who remembered how James and his brother had
been spirited from house to house until a settlement could
be reached with their owner, Parson Thompson. One of
those who knew the Mars story was Deacon Amos Petti-
bone, whose forebears had owned the tavern in which the
Mars family found their first refuge. The Deacon actively
carried on the family tradition, and quite openly too.
It was later recalled that, on one occasion, he brought "a
young runaway slave whom he had kept overnight" to a
neighbor's home, so that the children could see "the scars
on the runaway's ankles, where he had worn irons" — a
vivid though wordless lesson in the cruelties that flourished
under the system of Southern slavery.19

For the fugitive traveling through northwestern Con-
necticut, Norfolk was the last stop in the state. From here,

WEST CONNECTICUT TRUNK LINES 127

he was sent across the Massachusetts border to New Marl-
boro, thence over to the Housatonic River line through
Stockbridge and Pittsfield to Bennington, Vermont. At
that junction point a well-traveled route came in from
Troy, New York ; and from it, the road ran north through
Rutland and Burlington to freedom beyond the Canadian
border.20

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CHAPTE

R9

EAST CONNECTICUT
LOCALS

To a significant extent, the Underground Railroad
lines of East Connecticut received their passengers
from neighboring Rhode Island. The people of that small
state had had their own experiences with slavery, by which
some of them had prospered. Merchants of Newport had
figured prominently in the international slave trade before
its abolishment in 1810, buying Africans from slave
raiders in their native land and transporting them to the
auction blocks of North America; the foundations of the
city's fashionable society rested on fortunes made in this
commerce in human flesh. Many businessmen of Providence
also had proslavery views. Yet in the religiously tolerant
atmosphere of Roger Williams' sometime colony, anti-
slavery Quakers and Baptists had achieved a powerful
voice. Due largely to their influence, the state's legislature
in 1784 enacted that all children born into slavery from
that time onward should be free ; and thereafter, the slaves
became fewer and fewer while the "free people of color"
increased rapidly in numbers. By 1840 there was a steady
stream of runaways passing through Rhode Island. Both
Quakers and Baptists worked diligently in their behalf —
and quite openly too. For instance, in 1849 the Baptists

128

EAST CONNECTICUT LOCALS 129

of the Pond Street Church, Providence, used the pages of
the local Gazette to solicit donations of money for the
work of the Underground Railroad.1

Fugitives who came into Rhode Island almost without
exception made the first stage of their voyage by water.
Stowing away among the cotton bales bound for Northern
mills, or invited on board ship by Underground agents
among the crewmen, they fled by sea from Southern ports
to landing places in Rhode Island itself or in neighboring
Massachusetts. Their fate when they came ashore, said a
conscientious Quaker lady who was party to such events,
"depended on the circumstances into which they happened
to fall." If some were caught, it appears that many more
achieved their longed-for freedom : 2

A few, landing at some towns on Cape Cod, would reach
New Bedford, and thence be sent by an abolitionist there
to Fall River, to be sheltered by Nathaniel B. Borden
and his wife, who was my sister Sarah, and sent by them
to my home at Valley Falls, in the darkness of night, and
in a closed carriage, with Robert Adams, a most faithful
Friend, as their conductor. Here, we received them, and,
after preparing them for the journey, my husband would
accompany them a short distance on the Providence and
Worcester railroad, acquaint the conductor with the
facts, enlist his interest in their behalf, and then leave
them in his care. They were then transferred at Worces-
ter to the Vermont road, from which, by a previous gen-
eral arrangement, they were received by a Unitarian
clergyman named Young, and sent by him to Canada,
where they uniformly arrived safely.

Another Quaker station in Rhode Island was the house
of Charles Perry, in Westerly. When nightfall came, fugi-
tives who took shelter with him were spirited over the state
line to the home of his brother Harvey in North Stoning-

130 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

ton. Harvey Perry was prepared for mishaps as well as
normal Underground Railroad business ; in his cellar was
"a well-concealed black hole," to be used as an emergency
hideout when an alarm was sounded. Another station-
keeper in this town, whose name has not been recorded,
"so ingeniously arranged his woodpile that it served as a
safe retreat for fugitives when danger threatened." 3

Leaving either of these two places of safety, the run-
away found himself conducted or sent through a network
of hideaways spreading among the isolated and scattered
villages of eastern Connecticut. To this maze of lines and
stations there were other possible entry points too. One of
these, of minor significance to the East Connecticut pat-
tern, was Old Lyme, at the mouth of the Connecticut
River. Some of its traffic in runaways flowed up the river
valley toward Hartford. But there was also an eastbound
line along the Sound toward New London and Norwich.4
Fugitives on this route might find shelter at a house in
Niantic. This station's operator remains unknown, but
the building still stands. According to local tradition,
slaves who arrived here made their presence known by tap-
ping on the windows; coming inside, they were hidden
from view in the base of a huge chimney.5

It is probable that another station was maintained just
east of Niantic in Waterford, and that its manager was
Nehemiah Caulkins, carpenter, hater of slavery, and fiery
advocate of abolition. When he attacked the South's "pe-
culiar institution," Caulkins had reason to know what he
was talking about. For eleven years, from 1824 to 1835,
he spent the winters working at his trade on plantations in
North Carolina, among slaves and their masters. There-
after, revolted by the cruelty and exploitation he had seen
and feeling impelled to awaken the conscience of the North
"in behalf of human freedom," he set down a factual — and

EAST CONNECTICUT LOCALS 131

coldly horrifying — account of his observations. This was
published as a contribution to Theodore Weld's great abo-
litionist anthology of 1839, American Slavery As It Is — a
book that, distributed by the tens of thousands, was a
powerful means of bringing converts to the antislavery
cause.6

From the home town of this influential spokesman for
freedom, the fugitive might find his way a few miles east-
ward to New London, or somewhat farther northward to
Norwich. The former, then prospering as a whaling port
second only to New Bedford, was the center of an active
abolition movement. Here was published a periodical whose
name declared its orientation — The Slave's Cry. Here, in
1844, was held a meeting "to hear the experience of the
fugitive — John — who is just from the land of whips and
chains — J. Turner, likewise a fugitive, was speaking when
we arrived." 7 It is not recorded how John and J. Turner
reached the city — possibly by ship, for New London's
ocean trade was extensive. Strangely, the identities of the
Underground operators remain unknown, although the
Hempstead house, oldest in the city, is said to have been
a station.8

The runaway heading inland from New London would
logically make for Norwich, a dozen miles away ; it could
be reached either by boat up the Thames River or by fol-
lowing the northbound road. Norwich was also a short dis-
tance from North Stonington, and it is probable that some
of Harvey Perry's erstwhile guests made it their next stop.
The town, lying where the Shetucket and Yantic rivers
joined to form the drowned estuary called the Thames,
was something of a seaport in its own right. Its two anti-
slavery societies, for men and for women, had Alpheus
Kingsley and Miss F. M. Caulkins as their respective sec-
retaries. It was the home of James Lindsey Smith, escaped

132 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

slave, shoemaker, and abolitionist lecturer, who was so
highly regarded that the United States marshal offered to
resign his position rather than turn Smith over to slave-
catchers. Yet so discreetly did its Underground Railroad
agents do their work that their identities remain undis-
covered.

Norwich was something else, too. It was the terminus
of the Norwich and Worcester railroad line, in whose cars
the Undergrounders of New London County frequently
forwarded their riders to operatives in Massachusetts.
With his passage money supplied him and with the help
of the railroad conductor enlisted in his behalf, the fugi-
tive rode the rails in broad daylight, for the one daily
northbound train left the terminal at 7:30 a.m.9

For those who did not travel by train, a patchwork of
Underground stations lay in an arc northwest, north, and
northeast of Norwich. The precise routes connecting them
are not fully known; presumably the fugitives traveled
now one road, now another, as safety or convenience indi-
cated. There was a station, of unknown management, at
Lebanon; it sent passengers northeast to Hampton, and
probably also to Willimantic, due north and much nearer
at hand. There were known agents in the village of Han-
over, in what was then Lisbon township. There were others
at Canterbury and at Plainfield.

At Central Village in the latter township lived Wesley
Cady, station-keeper and conductor. Using an old cov-
ered wagon, he drove southward in the evening, ostensibly
on his way to market but actually headed for an Under-
ground depot down the line — whether North Stonington,
Norwich, or some unremembered place nearer at hand is
unknown. In the morning he returned home with a cargo
of dark passengers hidden beneath the wagon cover; and
if the neighbors knew of this traffic, it was not by Cady's

EAST CONNECTICUT LOCALS 133

wish. Some years later, his son W. W. Cady stated that
"the children were never allowed to know anything about
it for fear they might tell and a person's life and property
was not safe if it was known that he harbored a slave." 10

Plainfield was a gateway to Windham County, where
abolitionist sentiment was more widespread and more
strongly held than in any other part of Connecticut.11 It
was the home of two antislavery societies, the one for men
having ninety-four members and that for women number-
ing forty-three in 1837. In both of these bodies "three or
four towns were represented, among them the far famed
town of Canterbury." This was the village, only four miles
from Plainfield, in which Prudence Crandall had under-
gone her martyrdom ; and the hue and cry raised against
her made slavery a topic of controversy in every hamlet
in that part of the state. The people of Windham County,
it was reported, "read with candor" about the persecution
of Miss Crandall and her supporters; "others even who
began to read with prejudice against them, the publishers
of fanatics, found their prejudice wearing away; and sev-
eral who were at first strongly opposed to Miss Crandall's
scheme" became "most zealous and active Abolitionists." 12
It is known that members of the Crandall family were
Underground agents in Canterbury. It is known also that
some fugitives reached this town from other points than
Plainfield — specifically, from Hanover.

In that country village, runaways were taken in charge
by Levi P. Roland and William Lee, who was a deacon of
the church and secretary of the antislavery society. These
men, presumably farmers, forwarded their guests either
northwest to Willimantic or northeast to Canterbury. Wil-
liam Lee's son Samuel later stated that these routes were
active from 1840 onward, and that "I occasionally piloted
a colored man from my father's to my brother's two and

134 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

a half miles distant." One fugitive settled in Hanover and
lived there for many years ; but when a villager told him
he was being sought by slave-hunters, he pressed onward
to Canada.13

For runaways traveling north in eastern Connecticut,
the main line ran through Brooklyn, Killingly, and Pom-
fret to Uxbridge or Worcester, Massachusetts. Yet those
journeying through Hanover generally reached Brooklyn
via a roundabout route through Willimantic and Hamp-
ton, rather than by the more direct way through Canter-
bury. The reasons for this apparent detour are unclear,
but the fact is well established. At Willimantic, John
Brown, J. A. Conant, and J. A. Lewis were active station-
keepers, receiving fugitives both by wagon and on foot —
possibly including some from Lebanon as well as those
from Hanover. They directed their visitors to Hampton,
where three more agents awaited them — Ebenezer Griffin
and Phillips Pearl, farmers, and Joel Fox, mason. All of
these were conductors as well as stationmasters, and Brook-
lyn was the destination to which they took their passengers
under wagonloads of hay. One runaway transported by
Fox is known to have been carried from Brooklyn to Dan-
ielson, where he was put aboard the Worcester train.14

The Brooklyn agents who raised the funds for this
refugee included George Benson, a man named Whitcomb,
and others. They were working in the tradition established
by the Reverend Samuel J. May, who as early as 1834 was
receiving fugitives at this town and sending them across
the state line to Uxbridge or Worcester.15 The local anti-
slavery societies numbered fifty-three men and twenty-two
women respectively. Brooklyn was a busy station, for most
of the East Connecticut lines converged here, probably
including a direct track from Wesley Cady's station in
Central Village. The operators here, if they could not make

The Reverend
James W. C. Pennington

*s

oq

g

EAST CONNECTICUT LOCALS 135

use of the railroad line from Danielson, might forward
their charges to either Prosper Alexander in Killingly or
to agents in Putnam.16 In the latter town, there was a
secret cell in a building later occupied by the Masonic
Club : this was well patronized by northbound fugitives.17
In this quarter of the state, Underground managers
obviously maintained a very close bond with the station-
masters in Uxbridge, Worcester, and Boston. Interesting
was an account that a member of West Killingly's anti-
slavery society forwarded to the Liberator :

A female, representing herself to be a slave, escaping
from Maryland, giving her name Ellen, and aged 19
years, stayed at my house last Friday night, and took
the 8 o'clock morning train, Saturday, for Boston. The
friends of the slave in this village [Danielsonville] raised
money sufficient to carry her to Boston, and some more
I advised her to leave the cars at Brighton and walk into
Boston, and to the Anti-Slavery Office, 21 Cornhill. She
designed calling on you. We have been sorry since she
left that we did not invite her to remain with us, as we
feel that no slave could be taken here, and rather wanted
the issue tested. She was a fine looking and intelligent
girl, neat and agreeable. Feeling very anxious for her
safe passage through this 'piratical Egypt,' I take the
liberty of writing to request you to communicate to me
information of her arrival in Boston, if such is the fact.

It was later learned, to the chagrin of abolitionists, that
this female fugitive was an impostor, who assumed the
names of Helen in Ohio, Orlena in Detroit, Ellen in Con-
necticut, and Mary in Worcester.18

Beyond Killingly and Putnam, the obvious track of the
fugitive led into Massachusetts, very likely to Uxbridge.
It was a gathering point for runaways, as the South Car-
olina abolitionist lecturer Angelina Grimke noted in a

136 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

letter to Theodore Weld early in 1838 : "We met two very
interesting ones in Uxbridge — a mother pining after her
son in bondage, a son upon whom she had seen 500 lashes
inflicted, after which he was given to her to rub with a
solution of salt and pepper. And a young man, whose heart
yearned over his sister in slavery." 19 From this commun-
ity, fugitives went on to Worcester or Boston, thence by
the established route through Vermont to Canada.

From the foregoing details, it becomes apparent that
the East Connecticut locals, with all their detours and
intertwinings, in a general way followed or paralleled the
valley of the Thames and Quinebaug rivers from the Sound
northward into Massachusetts. Yet there were two points
of abolitionist activity in the area whose places in the pat-
tern remain unclear. One was Mansfield, north of Wil-
limantic, which could boast the largest antislavery society
in the state — in 1837, 300 members, headed by Dr.
H. Skinner, out of a total population of approximately
2400 men, women, and children.20 The other was Andover,
some ten miles west of Willimantic in the direction of
Hartford. On a side road near this village, the Hendee
house had "mysterious secret closets and a tunnel from
the cellar to a thicket, one hundred feet from the house
... a relic of the 'Underground Railroad' days." 21 Who
managed this station, if indeed it was one, is unknown;
and whether its dark lodgers moved eastward to Willi-
mantic, or northward through Mansfield, or westward
through Hartford to the grand junction at Farmington,
can only remain a subject of speculation.

in5HSHSZ5E5H5HSZSZ5Z5E5Z5aSHSE5a5H5E5H5H5H5E5E5B5H5H5ESH5ZHHS

CHAPTER

10

VALLEY LINE TO
HARTFORD

Besides the vessels that brought fleeing slaves to land-
ings at New Haven, New London, and other salt-
water ports, not a few river steamers, transporting with
their cargo those same stowaways, sailed up the Connect-
icut River. In its great river, flowing 400 twisting miles
from its source in New Hampshire to the Sound at Old
Saybrook, the state possessed a central waterway which
from earliest times had been a major artery of traffic.
Almost every town along the Connecticut, from its mouth
to the head of navigation, was a center of boat-building
and a port for fishermen, river boats, or even ocean-going
vessels. Old Saybrook, Middletown, and Hartford were
important centers of overseas shipping. Old Lyme, it is
said, "once knew a time when every dwelling housed a cap-
tain's family." x

Many times the boats that sailed these inland waters
carried more than merely legal cargo and freeborn pas-
sengers. Abolitionist shipowners like Jesse G. Baldwin of
Middletown found room on their craft for any fugitive
that needed it.2 The steamers that after 1824* regularly
plied the route from New York to Hartford, carrying
Southern cotton to Connecticut's mills, also brought

138 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Southern runaways to Connecticut's freer air. James Lind-
sey Smith and the fugitive Charles were only two of those
who made part of their journey to freedom in this way.
When the river steamers were first used to transport
refugees, and whether the plan was instigated by Hart-
ford's Underground workers or by those in New York,
remain uncertain; but as Smith's narrative shows, the
runaway was directed to the river steamer and had his fare
paid by agents in Manhattan.

Despite the importance of water-borne traffic, it is
probable that most fugitives who followed the valley line
did so by going along the river's banks. Old Lyme, on the
eastern side near the stream's mouth, was an Underground
Railroad center of "great activity." 3 How many of its
handsome old houses, many of them dating from the eight-
eenth century and occupied by the families of seafaring
men, were actual stations is undetermined. The Moses
Noyes house, on the west side of Lyme Street, was one of
them ; * it is logical to suppose that there were others.
The agents in this locality sent some of their guests east-
ward in the direction of New London, but others went
upstream along the Connecticut River, at this point flow-
ing from northwest to southeast.

The precise route of those riverside travelers who fol-
lowed the east bank remains a matter of conjecture. Cer-
tain homes in East Haddam apparently afforded them pro-
tection and rest ; details are lacking, but there is sufficient
reason to believe that the descendants of Captain James
Green, who owned the Blacksmith Arms at East Haddam
Landing, furnished one of these havens.5

The foremost shipbuilders in Middlesex County were
to be found in East Haddam ; Gideon Higgins and George
E. and William H. Goodspeed were most prominent among
them. Higgins, it is said, was not only a master designer

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 139

of ships but also a devout abolitionist, "a radical," and
"uncompromising in his convictions." Making his home at
Chapman's Landing, where the Goodspeed Opera House
now stands, he no doubt performed many acts of charity
for the nearly famished stowaways who stepped into his
parlor from the gangway.6 Though the Goodspeeds were
not described as having Higgins' proclivities, yet from
one of the vessels they constructed, the Hero, a fugitive
slave made a hairbreadth escape from his owner : 7

Among the colored men employed upon the Hero, was a
fugitive slave. His 'master,' wishing to use the new law
to arrest him, took passage in the Hero, thinking to catch
the man upon reaching Hartford. But at East Haddam,
the hunted man felt moved in spirit to go ashore and
examine the country. When the boat reached Hartford,
the hunters could not find him. They sought diligently,
but in vain.

Whether this slave, having baffled his pursuers, received
the humane assistance of Gideon Higgins, or through his
own courage and ingenuity fell into the company of friends
at the Blacksmith Arms on Main Street, is not a matter
of record.

Nor is there any clue as to what accommodations existed
for him in the long reach from that point to Glastonbury.
The latter town was the home of Mrs. Hannah Smith, a
staunch abolitionist, who with her daughters conducted
antislavery rallies in her dooryard on pleasant evenings.
She was sensitive to the needs of Connecticut's free Ne-
groes, for she noted that on November 12, 1849, "Mr.
Beman, a colored man, called to bring a pamphlet about
their Convention." 8 That Mrs. Smith also entertained
fugitives in flight is more than probable. A person of her
strong abolitionist views could hardly have failed to do
so at need, but no discreet Underground agent would

140 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

enter such facts in her diary. Where the trail led beyond
Glastonbury can only be guessed — possibly eastward to
Andover, possibly straight north or across the river to
Hartford, some five or six miles away. In any event, traf-
fic on the Connecticut's eastern bank was light compared
to that which followed the western side.9

That shore could be reached by the fugitive at a num-
ber of points — across the river's mouth from Old Lyme;
direct from the sea at Old Saybrook or ports farther up
the river; and overland by the established Underground
line from New Haven to Deep River or by dimly trace-
able laterals that ran inland from Madison and Westbrook
toward Middletown. Saybrook, as James Lindsey Smith
had found, was none too hospitable to abolitionists and
their "friends" ; but the case was otherwise in Deep River,
where Deacon George Read was ever ready to help the
runaway who, like Uncle Billy Winters, stood in need of
his assistance. Equally committed to the succor of the
fugitive were the Warners, father and son, in nearby
Chester. Underground agents of undetermined identity
were active in Haddam, a few miles upriver, and in Dur-
ham, some little distance west of that point. All of these
lines — the river road and the laterals west of it — con-
verged in the area of Middletown.10

Within that city itself, abolitionist and Underground
activity was considerable, with Jesse G. Baldwin, the Rev-
erend Jehiel C. Beman, and Benjamin Douglas among the
leaders.11 Middlefield, at the time an outlying area of the
township of Middletown rather than a legal entity, was a
notable center of antislavery feeling. This was the com-
munity whose citizens, under the leadership of William
Lyman, so ringingly stated their defiance of the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850. Among those who rallied about him
were David Lyman, Alfred and Russell Bailey, James T.

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 141

Dickinson, Marvin Thomas, and Phineas M. Augur — all
of them dirt farmers except perhaps Augur, who was a
town official and a land surveyor. The farm of William
Lyman constituted the chief Underground station in the
district if not the only one; it was well established and
well patronized.12 Augur, who designed the first accurate
map of Middlefield, was an active conductor ; and on var-
ious occasions, over the roads he knew so well, he escorted
fugitives to other stations on their route to freedom.13 He
could take his imports west to Meriden, northwest to Ken-
sington or New Britain, east to Middletown, or north in
the direct line to Hartford. In any case, the ultimate des-
tination was likely to be Farmington.

For those who went straight north from the Middle-
town-Middlefield area, way stations existed at Rocky Hill
and at Wethersfield. Jesse G. Baldwin of Middletown, in
his occasional role as a conductor, is known to have taken
passengers in their direction ; 14 but who maintained them,
and precisely how they fitted into the intricate network
that was the Underground Railroad, are matters as yet
undiscovered.

Contiguous to Wethersfield was the important city of
Hartford, metropolis of central Connecticut and, with
New Haven, co-capital of the state. Abolitionist views
were not universal among its citizens. Its Whig and Demo-
cratic politicians tended to soft-pedal the slavery issue for
fear of offending Southern members of their parties, and
its manufacturers had strong business reasons for not
wishing to disturb their Southern customers. The city was
the site of the annual meetings of the Connecticut Colo-
nization Society. It had been the scene of a race riot in
1835, when home-going Negroes were attacked by white
roughs as they left church. Nonetheless it was the center
of much effective antislavery work, in which it was closely

142 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

linked to neighboring Bloomfield and, especially, Farming-
ton.

Some of that work took the form of the publication of
abolitionist periodicals. At one time or another, Hartford
was the headquarters of three of these — the Free Soil
Republican, the Christian Freeman, and the Charter Oak,
the two latter being merged in the mid-1 840's under the
editorship of William H. Burleigh. The city was also the
location of annual meetings of the Connecticut Anti-
Slavery Society and of such special gatherings as that
called to protest the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In fact,
its reputation as an antislavery center was well established
by 1839. In that year, when the Circuit Court was con-
sidering the case of the Amistad captives, District Attor-
ney Holabird wrote to the State Department: "I should
regret extremely that the rascally blacks should fall into
the hands of the abolitionists, with whom Hartford is
filled." 15

Most prominent among the antislavery men in the
area was unquestionably Francis Gillette, who lived for
some years in Bloomfield and later in Hartford. Although
trained in the law, he never practiced it, instead spending
his efforts on his ancestral farm and in working for social
causes — temperance and educational reform as well as
the abolition of slavery. His wife was a sister of John
Hooker, a lawyer and leading antislavery man of Farm-
ington; hence he was connected by marriage with Mrs.
Hooker's brother and sister, Henry Ward Beecher and
Harriet Beecher Stowe.16 Gillette was among the incor-
porators of an insurance firm known as the American
Temperance Life Insurance Company, which later became
the Phoenix Mutual. He was also chairman of the board
of trustees of the Connecticut state normal school at its
foundation in 1849 and for many years thereafter. For

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 143

causes like these, both in private life and in the political
arena, he was a ceaseless campaigner. Twice he was elected
to the General Assembly, in 1832 and in 1838, when he sup-
ported the bill that would have given Negroes the right to
vote. He ran for governor on the Liberty Party ticket in
1842 and several times thereafter. In 1854 a coalition of
Free Soilers, Whigs, and temperance voters sent him to
the United States Senate to fill out the unexpired term of
Senator Truman Smith. In his year there, he was able to
vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and to make his
voice heard as a ringing spokesman against slavery.17

Gillette's home in Bloomfield was a commodious house
built by himself "of unhewn stone brought from the nearby
mountain-side." More than once, it is reported, he here
"welcomed and gave shelter for a night to the flying slave,
whose stories and songs, as he warmed and cheered him-
self by the fire, made a lifelong impression upon his young
listeners." 18

In 1853, Gillette and his brother-in-law Hooker jointly
purchased a hundred-acre property, known as Nook Farm,
on the Farmington road — then just outside Hartford,
afterward well within the city limits. Here, in houses built
on streets newly opened, sprang up the homes of a dis-
tinguished group of cultural and civic leaders — among
them Joseph R. Hawley, a lawyer who became a Union
general and a United States Senator; Charles Dudley
Warner, essayist and long-time editor of the Hartford
Courant; in due time Harriet Beecher Stowe herself; and,
later, a rough-hewn writing man from the West named
Samuel L. Clemens. Recalling this community in after
years, Hooker felt that he "ought not to omit William
Gillette, then a boy growing up among us, the son of my
sister, who has since become distinguished as an actor and
playwright." 19

144 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

In his new surroundings, Gillette first occupied the
original farmhouse for several years, then built himself
"a large and very pleasant house on the same street." The
entire community became a center of Hartford's intel-
lectual and social life, where visitors outstanding in pub-
lic affairs and in literary and philanthropic activities were
frequent.20 Perhaps not so frequent — and certainly less
conspicuous — were the dark travelers who came in secrecy,
found shelter and food in Gillette's barn, and went on their
way never knowing that they had enjoyed the hospitality
of a United States Senator.21

Hartford's Underground operatives other than Gil-
lette were men less in the public eye; and so far as the
record is concerned, largely anonymous. They included
the "Mr. Foster" and "friends" — many in number but not
otherwise identified — who helped James Lindsey Smith get
through to Springfield. There were also the "Mr. B." and

the several unnamed gentlemen of "H " who spirited

Charles to "F " and thence to safety. In their own day,

when their activities for the runaway were illegal, it would
not have been prudent to give their names ; but they did
not hesitate to rejoice publicly when "four fresh fugitives
reached Hartford" in October 1850 and were dispatched
safely to Canada.22

Among the fugitives who came to Hartford, an unde-
termined number sought to make the city their permanent
home, and there were many residents prepared to help
them find a place in the community. Charles, during his
three months of comparative safety in Connecticut, had
been employed by a "respectable gentleman" who became
much interested in him and put him on the Underground
Railroad when that step became necessary. At about the
same time, a fugitive girl whose name is not recorded found
an even better friend in her employer, Elisha Colt. Walk-

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 145

ing in the street one day, this woman met her former
owner's nephew ; but instead of threatening her, he greeted
her in a friendly manner. His family, he said, had for-
given her for running away, and to prove it, he had a gift
of clothes for her in his room; would she come with him
to get them? So smoothly did he speak that she went along
as asked. But, once in the room, the young man locked
the door and let the girl know that he meant to arrest her
as a fugitive slave. She managed to break away, however,
by leaping desperately through a window. By good for-
tune, she fell onto an awning below rather than onto the
street, escaping without serious injury. When Colt learned
of this, he went to work at once in her behalf, holding her
in safety until he could make a financial arrangement with
her claimant and purchase her freedom.23

Hartford was also home to one of the most distin-
guished of all fugitives from bondage, the Reverend James
W. C. Pennington, D.D. Born a slave in Maryland in
1809, he escaped at the age of twenty and made his way
to Philadelphia. There an elderly woman directed him to
a Quaker, identified only by the initials W. W., who
greeted the runaway with the words : "Well, come in and
take thy breakfast, and get warm, and we will talk about
it; thee must be cold without any coat, come in and
take thy breakfast and get warm." These words from a
stranger, spoken with "an air of simple sincerity and
fatherly kindness," as Pennington later recorded, made
"an overwhelming impression" on his mind. He remained
with this man for some time; and here he took the first
steps in the direction he was to follow so successfully. "It
was while living with this Friend, and by his kind attention
in teaching me, that I acquired my first knowledge of writ-
ing, arithmetic, and geography." After six months of this
training, Pennington went to Long Island, where he

146 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

taught two years in a Negro school. Then, having a thirst
for further education, he removed to New Haven, where
he hoped to study theology at Yale. For reasons not clear
— possibly because he lacked the necessary prerequisites in
formal training — he was not admitted to the theological
school. Nevertheless he was permitted to pursue his studies
"by sitting with the classes though not participating." In
this way he managed to study history, astronomy, algebra,
philosophy, logic, rhetoric, and systematic theology.24

Pennington received a license to preach in 1838 and
began a long career as pastor of the Talcott Street Con-
gregational Church, Hartford. He became an outstand-
ing minister, "widely known and very much respected by
the clergy of the city, as well as by the people generally."
Twice he was elected president of the Hartford Central
Association of Congregational Ministers, a group compris-
ing some twenty of the leading clergymen of that domina-
tion. He went as a delegate to the General Convention for
the Improvement of the Free Coloured People, the World's
Antislavery Convention, and the World Peace Convention.
The latter two met simultaneously, in London, in 1843.
Thus Pennington made his first visit to England, where he
preached as visiting minister in many Dissenting churches.
He exchanged pulpits with fellow ministers in Connecticut
also — among others, with Dr. Noah Porter of Farming-
ton, whose parishioners were "astonished, some of them
shocked, by seeing one of the blackest of men in their
pulpit." 25

All this while, Pennington's status as a runaway slave
was known only to the Philadelphia Quakers who had first
befriended him. Not even his wife was told the truth, lest
she be troubled about his safety. Pennington himself, how-
ever, was "burdened with harrassing apprehensions of
being seized and carried back to slavery" — the more so as

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 147

the troubled 184>0's increasingly foreshadowed a coming
crisis. At length he could stand the strain no longer. He
went to John Hooker, who was still living in Farmington,
and told him the facts: that his original name was Jim
Pembroke; that he had run away from his owner, Frisbie
Tilghman of Hagerstown, Maryland ; and that he wanted
to purchase his freedom.26

Hooker was glad to handle the case. First he sent
Pennington to Canada for safety's sake. Then he wrote
Tilghman a letter asking what price he would accept for
the slave's freedom. Tilghman replied that although "Jim
Pembroke" was "a first-rate blacksmith, and well worth
$1,000," he would take half that amount to settle the
matter. He also implied that he had some knowledge of his
erstwhile bondsman's new name and occupation. The ask-
ing price was considerably higher than the sum available
to meet it, and Tilghman's implication was a sign of pos-
sible danger. On Hooker's advice, Pennington went from
Canada to the British Isles.

In all, he was abroad about two years; the Fugitive
Slave Law, passed soon after his departure, made it impos-
sible for him to return safely until Tilghman's claim was
satisfied. Pennington's name was already familiar to Brit-
ish abolitionists, and his autobiography had been published
in London. His character and intellectual accomplishments
won him warm friends wherever he went. His greatest
honor came in Germany, where, on a visit to the Univer-
sity of Heidelberg, he was awarded the degree of doctor
of divinity, in a ceremony that included the following
words :

You are the first African who has received this dignity
from a European University, and it is the University of
Heidelberg that thus pronounces the universal brother-
hood of humanity ! 27

148 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Pennington replied in a graceful speech, in which he
declared his personal unworthiness of the honor but
accepted it as a representative of his race.

While England entertained this Negro minister and
Germany honored him, Scotland provided him with the
most practical help. A group of abolitionists there made it
their business to obtain his legal freedom. Forming them-
selves into a committee for the purpose, they set about
raising the necessary funds. Then they instructed Hooker
to resume negotiations with Tilghman and to carry them
through, whatever the cost might be.

The lawyer's next letter to the Maryland man, how-
ever, brought an answer from a stranger. Tilghman, it
said, had died; the writer was the administrator of his
estate; and to settle the affair promptly, he would accept
$150. He added that, under the law, he had no power to
manumit ; he could only sell the slave, and who would the
purchaser be ? With his reply, Hooker sent both the money
and a bill of sale to himself ; and when it came back from
Maryland, duly receipted, ownership had been lawfully
transferred to this Yankee abolitionist who was a descen-
dant of the Reverend Thomas Hooker and a brother-in-
law of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Hooker kept the
document for a day "to see what the sensation would be."
Then he executed and had entered in the Farmington town
records a deed of manumission, whereby he set free "my
slave, Jim Pembroke, otherwise known as the Rev. James
W. C. Pennington, D.D."

Thus Pennington became legally a free man, able to
return home and to resume the pastorate in which he so
long served his flock and shed luster on his adopted city.
By his own efforts he had fled to freedom, achieved a high
place in the world, gained international honors, and finally

VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 149

cleared his position in the eyes of an unjust law. It was
perhaps only fitting that, when he needed an agent to
negotiate for him, he found that agent not in Hartford but
in Farmington, where so much of Connecticut's Under-
ground Railroad activity was centered.

3SaSHSZSHSZ5aSZSB5HEESZEH5Z5HSHSE5aSZSZ5ZSaSHSHSZ5H5EnSHSHSE5

CHAPTER

11

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY
STATION

In the decade before the Civil War, Middletown pre-
sented a peaceful scene of horse-drawn vehicles rolling
along the tree-lined streets. It was not unusual to see a
Negro hackman quietly speaking to his team as they
climbed the slope toward Wesleyan University's brown-
stone buildings, or a Negro laborer working with pick and
shovel on the right of way of the New York and Boston
Rail Road, then under construction. Generally, however,
a decent living did not come easily to these people just
emerging from slavery, among whom were not a few fugi-
tives from Southern bondage. In 1850, most of the 149
Negroes in the city were seamen, laborers, or — unfor-
tunately— paupers, though one had an estate valued at
$2000.1

There had been something of a Negro population in
Middletown since 1661, a decade or so after the first
settlement, when sea captains brought a few African slaves
from Barbados and sold them at auction. The slave trade
never became as important here as it was in New London,
Boston, and some other ports ; but it is recorded that John
Bannister, Newport merchant, was pleased in 1752 to

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 151

find Middletown purchasers for "the finest cargo of Negro
men, women, and boys ever imported into New England." 2
The number of slaves had risen by 1756 from its original
handful to 218 in a total population of 5664. Middletown
then ranked third among Connecticut towns in Negro
inhabitants, but hardly anyone at that time "held more
than two slaves." 3

If one of these bondsmen was sold, the purchaser was
likely to be someone in a nearby town or in Middletown
itself. In 1777 Joseph Stocking signed a document that
transferred ownership of one Silvia to George Wyllys : 4

Know all men by these presents that I Joseph Stocking
of Middletown in the County of Hartford and State of
Connecticut for the Consideration of Thirty Pounds law-
ful Money received to my full satisfaction of George
Wyllys Esquire of Hartford in the County aforesaid do
give grant Bargain and sell & convey and deliver to the
said George Wyllys Esqr his Heirs and Assigns a certain
Negro woman slave name Silvia of the Age of twenty
three years.

At about the same time a colored woman named Pegg was
sold by Theophilus Woodbridge of Middletown to Ben-
jamin Arnold of the same place. Arnold later brought suit
against Woodbridge, claiming that the seller had rep-
resented the slave as enjoying the best of health, although
he knew she suffered from epileptic fits. Arnold won the
case in court, and an award of damages was upheld on
appeal.5

Just as those who bought slaves were sometimes dis-
satisfied with their purchases, so the slaves were sometimes
unhappy with their owners. One in Middletown went so far
as to emasculate his master's son. This presented a legal-
istic puzzle for the Superior Court at Hartford, where the
offender was brought to trial, "for there existed no law

152 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

covering such a crime." Finally the Court invoked the
Mosaic injunction of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth." The slave was punished accordingly.6

Connecticut's laws for the gradual emancipation of
slaves had taken full effect in Middletown by 1830. But
many Negroes, although they had achieved freedom in a
legal sense, were the victims of discrimination, living in a
sort of half-caste status in the least desirable parts of the
town. A Wesleyan University man, identified only by the
initial "K," reported on this situation in 1840 : 7

One cold, bleak, November evening, I knocked at the door
of a miserable block, in one of the darkest lanes in town,
and enquiring for the person of whom I was in pursuit
was directed up stairs, till reaching the attic, an emaci-
ated colored female answered my summons, and welcomed,
with the most grateful acknowledgements, my visit to her
desolate home. There were a few expiring embers upon
the hearth, over which two small children sat shivering.
The furniture of the room consisted of a broken chair,
an old chest, a straw pallet in one corner, and a much
used family Bible. ... I saw that I had interrupted her
evening meal, and requested her to proceed without notic-
ing me. She gathered her little ones around the old chest,
and brought a plate, containing a few crusts of bread, as
their intended repast.

As she sat down, awhile, she remained lost in thought,
now and then a tear dropping down upon her cheek ; then
raising her eyes to heaven and clasping her hands . . .
she burst forth, "All these blessings, Lord, and Christ
too?" As I left that humble paradise, I thought I had
discovered the essence of that command, "Whether ye
eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of
God."

Like that poor woman, Middletown's Negroes found
comparatively few of the citizens who cared in the least

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 153

about their welfare. In fact, the temper of the city was
predominantly sympathetic to slavery and opposed to
abolition or anything that smacked of it. Although slavery
was a blightful condition, declared a Middletown editor,
it was impracticable to give the slaves their freedom.
"They know not the value of liberty . . . and any external
interference, while it has no influence in meliorating their
condition, exasperates their masters, and weakens our
bond of Union." 8 The colonization movement was strong,
and Willbur Fisk, first president of Wesleyan University,
was one of its leaders ; in his opinion, the proper place for
people of color was Africa, where they could unfold in
their natural habitat. Middletown, he boasted, was the
seat of "the earliest Colonization Society in Connecticut
. . . for the ladies of the city, to their honor be it spoken,
have long had a society in successful operation, the earliest
in Connecticut, if not in New England." 9 To people like
these, the presence in their midst of Negroes — in 1830, 209
altogether, as against 6683 whites — threatened the amal-
gamation of the races.10

The Negroes, almost to a man, wanted no part of the
colonization scheme. Instead, they looked to the antislavery
movement for help in their quest for full American citizen-
ship.11 In Middletown, the first antislavery organization
was a direct outgrowth of their own work. In 1828 a group
of colored people gathered at the home of George W. Jef-
frey, a laborer, where they organized the African Meth-
odist Episcopal Zion Church. Its building was erected on
Cross Street near Mount Vernon Street, close to the Wes-
leyan campus; and when the Reverend Jehiel C. Beman
became its pastor in 1831, it found its guiding spirit.
Beman came from Colchester and was proud of the origin
of his name. His father, once a slave, had chosen it on
obtaining his freedom; for, as he said, he had always

154 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

detested slavery and wanted to be a man, so now he would
adopt a name that declared his newly won condition.12

The minister's home was near the church on Cross
Street, where he lived with his wife Clarissa and their fam-
ily. Mrs. Beman was among those who, on April 2, 1834*,
organized the Colored Female Anti-Slavery Society of
Middletown — the second women's abolition society in the
United States. This forward-looking group not only
sought the end of slavery but also worked for "mutual
improvement and increased intellectual and moral hap-
piness" among free Negroes.13 William Lloyd Garrison,
visiting the Bemans on a tour through Connecticut in the
early 1830's, was greatly impressed with their faith and
their work in freedom's cause. "It was with as much dif-
ficulty as reluctance," he said, "I tore myself from their
company." 14

A son of this dedicated couple was Amos G. Beman,
then a young man about twenty years of age. He had
received some primary schooling from Miss Huldah Mor-
gan, a colored schoolmistress, and through his own efforts
he had acquired further learning. Now, with the newly
opened Wesleyan University almost in his dooryard, he
wished to complete his formal education. Wesleyan pro-
vided teachers for the Zion Church's Sunday school, but
its Joint Board had ruled that "none but male white
persons shall be admitted as students of this institution." 15
Charles B. Ray, who later became an efficient Under-
ground operator in New York, was unable to obtain any
instruction there. Amos Beman, more fortunate, found
among the students a friend who "was aroused to assist
the persecuted." This was Samuel P. Dole.

Dole, who had reported on Ray's difficulties to Gar-
rison's Liberator, offered to teach Amos three times a
week. For six months Amos followed the course of instruc-

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 155

tion laid out by Dole. Though he was a constant victim of
"horseplay and name-calling" from many of the students,
yet he kept on with his work. Then, one day, he received
a letter :

Middletown, October 5th, 1833
To Beman, Junior :

Young Beman: — A number of the students of this Uni-
versity deeming it derogatory to themselves, as well as
to the University, to have you and other colored students
recite here, do hereby warn you to desist from such a
course ; and if you fail to comply with this peaceable
request, we swear, by the Eternal God, that we will resort
to forcible means to put a stop to it.

Twelve of Us

Apprehensive, Amos immediately relayed this letter to his
tutor Dole, who later wrote down his actions and his find-
ings:

The letter was given to our teacher ; the President being
absent, it was also shown to two of the Professors. One
of them, with a significant toss of the head, passed by
on the other side ; the other stated that bating the pro-
fanity, it expressed the sense of a by-law enacted by the
Board of Trustees at their last meeting — by subsequent
inquiry, we have found it even so. The resolution was
moved and supported by ardent Colonizationists.16

This was clearly the handwriting on the wall. Amos
Beman dropped his studies in Middletown and went to
Hartford, where he taught a primary school for colored
children for the next four years; thereafter he moved to
New Haven and the ministry where he did such important
work for the antislavery cause. A year after he had gone,
Wesleyan's Joint Board countermanded its ruling against
Negroes and opened the doors of the college to male stu-
dents without regard to race.17

156 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Meanwhile, abolitionist sentiment was beginning to
stir among the citizens of Middletown, and for this
Jesse G. Baldwin was largely responsible. He was a native
of Meriden, born on a farm there in 1804, and in his late
teens he became an itinerant peddler of silver and plated
ware. In this vocation he traveled extensively, especially
in the South, where he saw the horrors of the auction block.
With his mind firmly set against the evils of slavery, he
came to Middletown in 1833, where he opened a store deal-
ing in "Yankee notions" and also began the manufacture
of cotton webbing on a small scale. In later life he branched
out into other lines — banking, insurance, and shipping.
He was a man who kept his own counsel ; it was said of him
that he "did not let his left hand know what his right hand
doeth." 18

Deep-seated was Baldwin's hatred of slavery, and it
became a guiding principle in both his business and his
personal life. The cotton he used was not purchased in
the American South, but from a Quaker settlement in the
West Indies where all the laborers were free. The sugar
served in his household came from "distant lands where
there were no slaves." When he traveled, he "carried loaf
sugar with him, which was made by free men, and, when
taking meals at hotels, he would sweeten his tea with the
sugar he carried, taking a lump or two from his vest pocket
and dropping it into his tea." 19

Soon after his arrival in the city, Baldwin was instru-
mental in organizing the Middletown Anti-Slavery Soci-
ety. The initial meeting took place in 1834, in the Guild &
Douglas shop at William and Broad streets. Here friends
of the slave gathered to hear fiery abolition speeches and
to formulate a set of by-laws that squared solidly with rank
Garrisonism. Meanwhile an angry mob of pro-slavery sym-
pathizers gathered outside. From jeers and catcalls they

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 157

passed to physical violence, hurling stones and eggs
through the windows at the men gathered within. Then
someone shouted: "Water would do no harm to a dirty
abolitionist !" No sooner said than done ; the mob obtained
buckets and began dousing the members with water. Mayor
Elijah Hubbard was summoned to the scene, but his read-
ing of the Riot Act could not abate the uproar. When the
abolitionists tried to get away, they were seized and
roughly handled: "Edwin Hunt was tumbled up Main
Street to the Mansion House, where he was later rescued.
Father Bunnell was kicked over the park, and Deacon
Lewis was chased across a lot. . . . The Reverend Mr.
D. Dennison and Mr. Dole were kicked and hounded
through William Street to Main." 20

In spite of this violent treatment, the Middletown anti-
slavery men reassembled at a later date to carry on their
business. At a meeting on October 22, 1837, held at the
First Methodist Episcopal Church, they adopted these
resolutions :

1. That the principles and practices of slavery are dia-
metrically opposed to the principles and practices
taught in the Bible.

2. That John Wesley and the founders of the M. E.
Church were Abolitionists and intended that the
Church should be an Abolition as well as a temperance
Church.

3. That the great and rapidly increasing number of
slave holders in the M. E. Church is cause of grief and
alarm and calls upon every friend of the purity and
prosperity of the Church to raise their united voices
in remonstrance against it and their persevering ef-
forts for its overthrow.

At the meeting's end, the members sang, to the tune of
"Auld Lang Syne," an anthem beginning as follows :

158 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

I am an abolitionist !

I glory in the name ;

Though now by slavery's minions hissed,

And covered o'er with shame : —

It is a spell of light and power —

The watchword of the free —

Who spurns it in this trial hour,

A craven soul is he.21

Despite its enthusiastic beginning, the antislavery
movement in Middletown made little headway. In August
of 1838, President Willbur Fisk of Wesley an was writing
to a correspondent in Covington, Georgia: "Abolitionism
in Middletown is on the wane. It has in a great measure
consumed its energies by the intensity of its own fires.
Unless they can get some new martyrs or some Go, they
will have to stop operations for want of materials." 22 Nine
months later, as revealed in the minutes of the Anti-
Slavery Society for May 1, 1839, the organization could
count on the financial support of only eleven members

23

We the undersigned agree to pay monthly, to the Treas-
urer of the Middletown Anti-Slavery Society, or his
order, the sum affixed to each of our respective names
during the year commencing May 1, 1839 :

Jesse G. Baldwin $52.00

Ira Gardiner 3.00

Chauncey Wetmore 12.00

A friend 5.00

I. W. M. Ree 12.00

Chas. B. Clark 2.00

Dea. Woodward 1.00

Richard Warner 5.00

Richard S. Rust 3.00

Benjamin Douglas 3.00

William Mitchell 5.00

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 159

This list reveals, not surprisingly, that Jesse G. Bald-
win was not only the driving force of the abolition move-
ment in Middletown but its chief monetary backer as well.
He was more than that ; he was also a station-keeper and
conductor on the Underground Railroad. His two schoon-
ers, built in 1848, the W. B. Douglas and the Jesse G.
Baldwin, are believed to have carried runaway slaves as
well as their ordinary cargoes.24 In his home at 15 Broad
Street, Middletown, one of the rooms was used as a hiding
place for fugitives ; this chamber was occupied in after
years by his grandson Henry Sill Baldwin, to whom the
old abolitionist frequently told stories of the operations of
the secret road to freedom. Some of these concerned the
elder Baldwin's work as a conductor, when he would "hitch
up his horses" and drive the refugees to a further station
on the route through Rocky Hill and Wethersfield to
Hartford and Farmington.25

There is no record that Alanson Work carried on
Underground activities in Middletown, but he was surely
an unflinching witness for the abolitionist faith. A native
of Woodstock, Connecticut, he lived in Middletown from
the early 1820's to about 1840 ; here he was married in
1825 to Miss Amelia A. Forbes, and here in 1832 was born
their son Henry Clay Work, who became famous as the
composer of "Marching Through Georgia" and such tem-
perance ballads as "Father, Dear Father, Come Home
With Me Now." 26 Several years later, Work took his wife
and four children to Quincy, Illinois, where by 1841 he
had become involved in the antislavery activities that cen-
tered about the Mission Institute there. Across the Missis-
sippi River lay Missouri, a slaveholding land ; the young
men who were "pursuing a course of training for the Chris-
tian ministry" at the Institute could hear, from the other
side of the stream, "the crack of the Overseer's whip" and

160 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

the cries of the beaten slaves. Alanson Work, together with
his student friends James E. Burr and George Thompson,
resolved to free at least some of these poor sufferers from
their misery. They devised a plan to cross into Missouri,
abduct two slaves with whom they had been in touch, and
send them northward by the Underground Railroad line
out of Quincy. But once they reached the west bank of the
river, they were seized by a group of angry Missourians,
who marched them off to prison. Swiftly they were brought
to trial on three counts: stealing slaves, attempting to
steal slaves, and intending to make the attempt. The ver-
dict was guilty ; the sentence, twelve years in the peniten-
tiary.27

Abolitionists of the more zealous sort often thought of
themselves as sharing in spirit the fetters of the slave;
Alanson Work now wore fetters in hard reality. Chained
in his prison cell, he wrote in his journal: 28

The Lord hears prayers ; blessed be his name. My chain
feels light this morning. Oh ! let me not trust in man. Last
evening being monthly concert for the oppressed, we
"remembered those in bonds, as bound with them." After
lying down to rest, and while thinking of those bound in
more galling chains than ours, we overheard a conversa-
tion, by which we learned that six slaves had crossed the
Mississippi, the night before, and that some persons were
preparing to go to the river to intercept other fugitives.
Gladly will I wear this chain till it galls my ankle to the
bone, if thereby the slave may go free.

Work continued to make friends among his fellow pris-
oners, even some who were incensed against his abolition-
ist principles; meanwhile he suffered his harsh imprison-
ment with Christian resignation. Finally, on the basis of
his exemplary behavior, he was released after three years,
six months, and seven days, on condition that he return to

MIDDLETOWN, A WAY STATION 161

Connecticut. Burr remained in jail a year longer, while
Thompson served five years of his twelve-year sentence.29
Safely back in his native state, Work did not forget
the bondsmen for whom he had suffered, and he was dis-
gusted with the apathy toward the slavery issue that he
saw around him. In 1846 he expressed his views in a letter
to the Charter Oak : 30

We are here in Middletown, and although much farther
from the poor slave than we were a few months ago, still
we do not intend to forget him. Having tasted a little of
the bitter cup which he has to drink, we hope to remem-
ber him as bound with him. I do not see or hear of much
doing in this place for the slave. I hear of no Liberty
meetings — no concerts — no prayer meetings, or prayers
for the slave, and if there is any sympathy for him, (with
a few exceptions) it appears to be locked up in the breast
that contains it. I have thought, should the slaveholders
come here into Connecticut, and take one out of every
family (the father, perhaps) and take him off to the
South and shut him up in their Penitentiaries, 0 Sir, we
should have Liberty men here then, and women and chil-
dren, too. There would be praying then, and tears and
sighs. And I think it would not end there, but there would
be some doing too.

In spite of Work's gloomy estimate of the situation,
there was "some doing" in Middletown, and the pump
shop of William and Benjamin Douglas was the center
of much of it. These two had come to the city from North-
ford in 1832, when William was twenty years of age and
his brother only sixteen. William became a partner in the
firm of Guild & Douglas; the firm's name was changed
when Benjamin joined it in 1839 after an apprenticeship
elsewhere. Together, the brothers became highly success-
ful in the manufacture of pumps invented and patented

162 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

by themselves; they maintained two plants, the former
Guild & Douglas works and a pump shop nearby on Wil-
liam Street. After the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave
Law, their establishment became known as the "Cradle of
Liberty" because of the abolitionist work that had long
centered there. Benjamin Douglas, in particular, was a
leading citizen, mayor of the city from 1850 to 1856 and
lieutenant governor of the state in 1861— 1862. 31 But even
his public standing did not entirely save him from the
attacks that abolitionists had to expect. At several meet-
ings that he attended, "stones were hurled through the
windows by those who held opposite views." During the
Draft Riots in New York City in 1863 he faced a greater
danger, when he rescued an escaped slave named Ephraim
Dixon from a mob "that would not have hesitated to take
his life." After hiding Dixon for a time, Douglas "smug-
gled him out of the city on a ferry boat and brought him
to Middletown." There he continued to befriend the man,
setting him up in a barber shop of his own.32

The runaways who reached these Middletown aboli-
tionists generally did so, as has been stated, by the Con-
necticut River line or one of its laterals; but the Under-
ground Railroad provided a highly adaptable system. On
one occasion William Wakeman brought a band of refu-
gees— a man, his wife, and three children — all the way
from Wilton to the hands of the Baldwin circle.33 What
circumstances made necessary so long a cross-country
journey can only be guessed, nor is it known what hap-
pened to this particular group. In all probability, like
the bulk of the fugitives for whom Middletown was a way
station, they were sent by one of the several available
routes to Farmington.

35HSHSB5a5Z5H5H5ZSHSZSZSlSZ5H5E5ESZSS5E5Z5^5a£fHSE5Z5HSE5E5H5E5

CHAPTER : ^/

FARMINGTON, THE
GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Farmington, in the year 1696, was a self-contained
farming village whose citizens produced virtually all
the things they consumed, minded their own business, and
elected their own leaders. One whom they honored with
public office was Frank Freeman, a Negro and a man of
property. His life's partner in an interracial marriage was
Maudlin, widow of Samuel Street of Wallingf ord ; but his
marital happiness was short-lived, for he died a few
months after the ceremony. His estate included books
appraised at over six shillings — a fair-sized library by
the standards of the place and time, when one considers
that that of Luke Hayes, schoolmaster and Freeman's
successor as husband of the often married Maudlin, was
valued at only eighteen pence.1

Like other Connecticut villages, Farmington had its
bondsmen during the colonial period. In 1790 the town-
ship's approximately 2700 residents owned just nine
slaves ; and these, it appears, were treated more as domes-
tic servants and members of the household than as chat-
tels.2 Ten years later there were left only two, one owned
by Thomas Lewis and the other by Elizabeth Wadsworth.
In 1820, after the state's gradual emancipation laws had
had time to take effect, there were none.3

164 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

In the early years of the century, the area around the
town was what it had been since the earliest settlement —
a farming region. The village proper stood adjacent to
the comparatively low-lying and fertile meadows along
the Farmington River, which came in from the northwest
and turned sharply to the north. It was linked with Hart-
ford and New Haven by a system of turnpikes, over which
stagecoaches plied between the state's two capitals. The
roads were "sandy in summer, buried out of sight by snow
drifts in winter, and, when these began to melt in the
spring, of unknown depth." It was only natural that, when
the Erie Canal opened in 1820 to become an assured suc-
cess, promoters and plain citizens saw in it a model worth
emulating. One result was the Farmington Canal, char-
tered in 1822 and opened for service in 1828, eventually
linking the Sound at New Haven with the Connecticut near
Northampton ; a planned extension to the St. Lawrence
River was never completed.*

This waterway, with its promise of easy communica-
tions, brought a change to Farmington's business life.
Small plants sprang up for the manufacture of paper,
hardware, knit goods, and carriages.5 These last-named
products were in demand in the South ; but there is noth-
ing to indicate that any local citizens developed strong
ties with Southern planters, as did manufacturers in other
Connecticut cities.6 Nonetheless there were some pro-slav-
ery residents, and almost everyone regarded the Negro
as belonging to a naturally inferior order of beings. John
Hooker, who was a boy in the 1820's, later wrote of "the
universal disregard of the rights of colored people" in
those days : 7

Negro was always spelled then with two "G's." The black
man seemed to have no rights as a man. He was often
kindly regarded by humane people, but such a thing as

FARMINGTON, THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION 165

his having the rights of a man was hardly thought of. In
church he sat in the negroes' pew, a pew close by the
door in the lower part of the house or in the gallery. . . .
When the anti-slavery movement came along it met not
only with ridicule, but with persecution. Its opponents did
not entertain a doubt of its ultimate failure. As the New
York Nation says of the time, it was a few fanatics on
one side and all society on the other.

Even then, however, there were those in Farmington
who took to heart the words of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal." Such a one, perhaps, was the
proprietor of Phelps' Hotel, where the stage from Hart-
ford made its regular stop. On one occasion it had among
its passengers a "decently-clad black man, on his way to
New Haven." Captain Goodrich, "one of New Haven's
aristocracy," was waiting to board the coach; when he
saw the dark passenger inside, he ordered him "with an
oath" to get out, and the stage driver seconded the com-
mand. Together they forced the Negro from the place
to which he had every right, whereupon the coach drove
off and left him standing. But Phelps, possibly from fear
that he would be blamed for the incident or possibly from
a simple sense of justice, "got up a wagon and drove the
man to New Haven." 8

By 1836, when Garrison's Liberator had been publish-
ing its message of freedom for half a decade, the climate of
opinion was showing a change. Early in that year Farm-
ington's antislavery society was organized, with Thomas
Cowles as its secretary and with seventy men as members.
There was also a women's abolition organization of forty
members. Between them, they included "some of the best
of the Farmington people." They held meetings, propa-
gandized for their cause, and listened to traveling anti-

166 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

slavery orators — among them the magnetic Quaker Miss
Abby Kelly, one of the most eloquent and impassioned
of speakers, and the Reverend Amos Phelps, one of the
gentlest and most moderate yet most impressive.9

Their work was not without opposition. While the town
was generally "quiet and orderly," it did contain some who
upheld the institution of slavery and others who could not
accept the Negro as a man and a brother. On one occasion
when the Reverend Mr. Phelps was speaking at the Con-
gregational church, "a stone was thrown with great vio-
lence through the window back of the desk at which he was
speaking, which passed close by his head, and went across
the hall to the wall on the other side. ... It might have
killed one whom it chanced to hit." Even as late as 1840,
when Hooker invited a "respectable-looking and decently-
clad" Negro to share his pew at church, "the moral shock
was very great. One of the church members said that I
had done more to break up the church than any thing that
had happened in its whole history." Early in the follow-
ing year, when Hooker opened his law office for the first
time, he "encountered much unfriendliness from those who
were bitter against the anti-slavery movement"; and a
worldly-wise relative who lived in another town advised him
that his identification with abolition would "very seriously
injure my chances of getting into business." 10

In that same spring Cinque, Tami, and the other
Negroes from the Amistad came to Farmington to enjoy
the hospitality of local abolitionists and to win supporters
all over town by their constant good cheer. Their simple
friendliness and almost childlike delight in the new sights
about them did much to break down local prejudice against
people of color. The walls crumbled further when, a few
years later, Farmington's beloved and respected minister
Dr. Noah Porter exchanged pulpits with the Reverend

FARMINGTON, THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION 167

Mr. (not as yet Dr.) Pennington, and his congregation
thus learned that a man of almost ebony hue could also
be an outstanding preacher.11 These events, particularly
the presence of the Amistad captives, created a sympathy
that was "concretely expressed by some of Farmington's
well-known citizens in making their homes stations of the
Underground Railroad." 12

The clandestine work, however, had been going on for
some little time before this. The incident involving Charles
was the first of which there is a reliably dated record; it
took place in 1838. At least five Farmington residents, one
of them a Negro, had parts in this affair as conductors or
otherwise, and two different houses sheltered the fugitive
during the several days he was secreted in the town.13 One
of these men was John T. Norton, who took care of
Charles' trunk and later set down the story of the escape.
He was also a good friend of the Amistad people, who were
frequent visitors at his house, and he was the man to
whom they turned for help when Grabbo was tragically
drowned.14

Of the other Underground operatives in Farmington,
then and later, not all can be identified, but they included
some of the most substantial citizens : Austin F. Williams,
Horace Cowles, William McKee, Levi Dunning, Samuel
Deming, Lyman and George Hurlburt, and Elijah Lewis.
Cowles, George Hurlburt, and McKee are known to have
been keepers of stations ; a colored man of unrecorded
name who made his home with Hurlburt was an active
messenger and conductor.15 If John Hooker was person-
ally involved in Underground operations, he did not admit
it, but he was certainly one of the leaders of the abolitionist
group.

Through the hands of these men, during the next
decades, passed a constant stream of fugitives on their

168 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

way from Wilton or New Haven or Hartford to stations
beyond the Massachusetts line. The town was indeed the
junction of Connecticut's escape routes, the Grand Cen-
tral Station of its Underground Railroad lines. Most of
the runaways went on after a few hours or a few days of
rest, but some remained to work for the farmers, relying
on them for protection and help if an attempt should be
made to recapture them.16

From those who stayed, for a time or permanently, the
villagers heard many stories of slavery and escape, saw
much evidence of the brutalities of the "peculiar institu-
tion." One of the runaways, who worked for a local farmer,
exhibited on his back the marks of a fearful scourging
with a raw lash.17 Another, in town for a short stop only,
had a story that illustrated only too well the slaveholder's
complete indifference to the human rights and feelings of
his bondsmen : 18

He was born and raised in Virginia, and married a slave
girl there who belonged to his master, and had three or
four small children. At this time slaves were raised in
Virginia to be sold for the cotton fields of the South, a
large business of that sort being carried on. This negro
was working in a field, when a slave trader came along
and bought him and several other negroes from his
master. They were attached to a coffle of slaves that the
trader was taking along, being handcuffed and fastened
together. He was not allowed to go home to see his family
or to get anything to take with him, but as the coffle
passed his cabin, quite a distance away, his wife saw him
and ran out screaming towards him. The trader upon
this drew out his pistol, and, pointing it towards her,
threatened to shoot her if she came another step. She
stopped and the coffle passed by, too far off for him
to call to his wife, and he never saw her or his children
again.

FARMINGTON, THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION 169

All of the fugitives were, in one way or another, vic-
tims of cruelty and injustice; some of them were heroes
too. Such a one was Henry, fine-looking, manly, and
energetic, who lived and worked with Arthur Williams and
was greatly liked by everyone who knew him. After he had
been in town for some months, he encountered a fugitive
from his former home in South Carolina, who had bad
news. The owner had accused Henry's old mother of aid-
ing her son's escape and had given her a terrible flogging
on the naked body as punishment. Knowing full well what
he would face if recaptured, Henry nevertheless decided
to go back and settle accounts. He would see and comfort
his mother, and he would get revenge by helping other
slaves to escape. And that was exactly what he did. Some-
how he managed to follow the Underground routes in the
reverse direction ; he reassured his mother ; and he got up
a company of eight others who were ready to follow him
north. Among them was a young woman, the wife of one
of the party, who was soon to have a child. At first she
walked through the night with the others; then, as she
grew more exhausted, her husband and Henry carried her
on their backs, turn and turn about. After several nights
of this hard going, she was utterly worn out; they all
stopped to watch her die, then buried her in the darkness
and pushed on. They had many perils and escapes on the
way, but they all reached Canada in safety. Henry, born
a slave, had certainly proved himself a bold and resource-
ful leader of men.19

Another leader, though in a different way, was George
Hurlburt's Negro friend, whose name unfortunately has
been lost. By channels not now traceable, he received news
of incoming fugitives. On such occasions he went at night
to the home of Elijah Lewis and gave a prearranged sig-
nal ; then the two would go away together to pick up and

170 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

guide their passengers. Sometimes these arrangements
were varied. On one occasion, it is reported, Lewis met this
same man with a fugitive "about nine o'clock . . . where
the wolf-pit road comes out of the Hartford Turnpike";
then the three of them proceeded along the road to the
Deer Cliff Farm and from there to Simsbury. Apparently
this particular runaway had been picked up in or near
Hartford.20

This same Elijah Lewis was perfectly willing to accept
former slaves as permanent settlers in the area. He once
sold some land to Jane and Maria Thompson, who were
buying it for the fugitive George Anderson. Soon after-
ward, however, Anderson saw in the Farmington streets
a planter from the South whom he knew to be a neighbor
of his former owner. Certain that he would be recognized
and seized, he changed his plans immediately and vanished
from the town.21

That particular planter may not have been searching
for runaway slaves, but there were those who did, and
Farmington's Undergrounders did their work with appro-
priate precautions. The daughter of one of them later
recalled how her father had gone into Hartford to a house
where a fugitive was concealed in a wardrobe. "It was win-
ter and sleighing. The man was put in the bottom of the
sleigh and covered in such a way as to resemble a load of
feed. He was brought to our barn and there passed on to
another place of safety and reached Canada in due time."
Another Farmington child, in later life Mrs. Hardy, was
once told by her father not to answer any questions from
anyone while he was away. All the long summer day she
sat on the doorstep, and in common with the rest of the
village she saw a horse covered with lather driven fran-
tically through the street by a stranger. Only later did she

FARMINGTON, THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION 171

learn that the driver was a slaveholder seeking his vanished
property — and that the slave had been hidden all day in
the southwest bedroom of her own house.22

That slave was only one of many who got safely away
from Farmington to some more distant point. The canal
was one possible route of escape but probably not the best
one — no traffic in winter, locks where a boat might be
inspected, no navigation at night. Besides, it was never
extended beyond Northampton, and it ceased operations
altogether in 1848. For travelers by land, Francis Gil-
lette's house in Bloomfield was a possible way station so
long as he lived there. The Chaffee house in Windsor, to
the northeast, was also a station. Phineas Gabriel in Avon
was an agent, escorting or directing fugitives north along
the Farmington River, perhaps as far as Granby or West
Suffield.23 Someone of unknown identity operated around
Simsbury, receiving passengers from Elijah Lewis and
probably others.

This was the main highway into Massachusetts, and
over the state line the chief receiving station was Hiram
Hull's farm in Westfield. It was a busy station indeed,
where the younger Hiram and his brother Liverus had the
duty of feeding the fugitives morning and night — some-
times as many as twenty all at once, lodged together in the
barn. Hiram Junior was responsible for the nighttime
safety of the runaways as well. Locking them in the barn
so that they would not be disturbed, he went to his own
room for a little sleep; but near him he kept a "billet of
wood about twice the size, as he remembered it, of a police-
man's club," which he considered enough to deal with any
trouble that might arise; he never had a pistol. In the
dark hours he occasionally strolled to the barn to see that
all was well. In the morning, after breakfast, the refugees

172 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

went on by daylight if the coast seemed clear; otherwise
they remained until evening, then proceeded to North-
ampton.24

That place, like Farmington, was something of an
Underground junction, for it received not only the pas-
sengers of the Westfield line but those who came by the
riverside route through Springfield. The latter city, the
metropolis of western Massachusetts, had received James
Lindsey Smith by boat from Hartford, and he was by no
means the only one to reach it, either by water or by land.
It was in fact an important center. During the 1830's the
Reverend Samuel Osgood harbored many runaways, help-
ing them to find both schooling and jobs. In this he was
assisted by Joseph C. Bull, John Howland, a Mr. Church,
and others.

As the flow of fugitives increased, parties were un-
loaded by night in the Worthington grove and taken to
various houses in the city; but this practice came to be
considered a dangerous one. Finally, the custom was to
receive runaways in the woods of the North End. Osgood's
circle secured a house in the woods for their shelter; but
the Negrjaejji&y^]^knew_±h^
roof-they-slept^ 5

John Brown, the grim and terrible man- who-wrote his
name in blood in Kansas and in fanatical heroism a,t
Harper's Ferry, also had his moment of activity in Spring-
field. Coming here in 1851 on a tour of Massachusetts, he
enlisted the help of the fugitive Thomas Thomas and
qrjyamzed the first Vigilance Committee in the Connects
icut Valley. Its members were some forty-four Negroes ; its
purpose, to resist the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave
Law systematically, by disciplined violence. Brown's
"Agreement and Rules" gave quite specific directions for
paramilitary actions, the disruption of court proceedings,

FARMINGTON, THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION 173

and the rescue of prisoners — "and be hanged, if you must,
but tell no tales out of school." What part this organiza-
tion played in the Underground is unclear, but the route's
activity increased after the troop was formed.26

Of all the agents in the Jlonnecticut Hi ver Valley, one
of the busiest was J. P. Williston of Northampton. Many
of the fugitives from both Springfield and Westfield came
to shelter in his barn and to eat at his table. Moreover, he
gave them money for their journey — something that few
other agents are known to have done. He was a temperance
man as well as an abolitionist, and he suffered for his con-
victions; the "rum element," together with pro-slavery
people, joined hands and burned his barn. To show his sen-
timents, he took a Negro boy into his house as a member
of the family and trained him in the printer's trade. Fur-
thermore, since the lad had musical gifts, he sang in the
choir of Northampton's Old Church, of which Williston
was a leading member.27

Another station-keeper in this area was Arthur G. Hill,
who described an incident of his work as follows: 28

William Wilson was landed here, remained a few months,
worked and earned some money, returned south secretly,
was gone quite a while but finally reached here again with
a grown-up son, that he had been able to guide from
slavery to freedom. The two men hired a small tenement,
were industrious and worked for an object. After they
had saved money enough they went south to rescue their
daughter and sister. After a long absence the younger
man returned, the older one having been captured and
returned to slavery. The younger was confident that his
father would again escape and decided to wait for him
here. Sure enough, in a little while the old gentleman and
daughter came and after a short stay to rest and get a
little money the whole party moved north to the Queen's
Dominion.

174 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

The natural route for these fugitives to follow ran
directly up the river valley and over the Vermont border
to Brattleboro, which also received passengers from Fitch-
burg, Worcester, and beyond. Thus the river line at last
connected with that from the Thames and Quinebaug
valleys ; and the passenger who had first seen Connecticut's
soil at Greenwich or New Haven might make his way
through Montpelier to Canada side by side with one who
had entered the Nutmeg State from Westerly in Rhode
Island.29

affaSHSZ5HSHSE5SSiL5BSZSZ5Z5aSZ5Z5H5HFasa5Z5aSZ5ZSHSZSZSHSB5H5ES

CHAPTER

13

THE ROAD IN
FULL SWING

The Compromise of 1850 had been intended to allay
the sectional conflict over the extension of slavery
to the territories ; and for a time, despite Northern opposi-
tion to the Fugitive Slave Law that was one of its provi-
sions, it seemed to succeed in its purpose. The Missouri
Compromise of 1820 remained in force ; no territory north
of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes would come into the
Union as a slave state, and by custom new states would be
admitted in pairs, one slave and one free. North and
South, at least in public, maintained an uneasy truce.1

It did not last long. Clay and Webster, architects of
the 1850 settlement, both passed from the scene in 1852,
and younger men came to the fore. One of them was
Stephen A. Douglas, the five-foot-tall "Little Giant" who
was a Democratic Senator from Illinois. He showed scant
interest in the slavery question as such, but he was an
ardent expansionist who envisioned America spreading
inexorably across the continent. He was also devoted to
the interests of his home state and its people, and he was
eager that the transcontinental railroad, already being
discussed, should spring from the Middle West rather
than from New Orleans, thus crossing the still-unorgan-

176 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

ized upper Louisiana Territory rather than the state of
Texas. As a step toward this end, Douglas in early 1854
introduced a measure to establish territorial government
in the region. In its final form, the bill provided for two
territories, Kansas and Nebraska, the one contiguous to
slave-holding Missouri, the other to free Iowa. It also
explicitly repealed the Missouri Compromise and provided
that, in line with Douglas' favorite principle of "popular
sovereignty," these territories should "be received into the
Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may
prescribe at the time of their admission." It was expected,
though not stated, that Nebraska would eventually come
in as a free state, while Kansas would enter as a slave
state, and almost at once. In spite of desperate Free Soil
opposition, the measure went through Congress by a sec-
tional vote, and when President Pierce readily signed it on
May 30, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the law. It was,
said Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, at once
the worst and the best bill on which Congress had ever
acted : the worst, because it was a triumph for slavery ; the
best, because "it annuls all past compromises with slavery,
and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it puts
freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple.
Who can doubt the result?" 2

One result was that, in Kansas, the fight between slav-
ery and abolition began at once, in earnest, with deadly
weapons. Missourian "border ruffians" flocked into the
territory to stake out claims, while Free Soil "jayhawkers"
with Sharps rifles rushed in from Northern states — among
them that fierce old Ironside from Torrington, John
Brown. While the battle lines formed in the West, opposi-
tion to the bill and support for the Free Soil settlers
showed themselves all over the East.

In Connecticut, less than two months after the act

THE ROAD IN FULL, SWING 177

became law, Eli Thayer and his supporters applied to the
General Assembly for a charter for the Connecticut Emi-
grant Aid Company, whose stated purpose was to enable
emigrants from that state and the rest of New England
to settle in Kansas and Nebraska. The charter never
materialized, but Thayer's group was more successful in
Massachusetts, where they secured passage of a measure
creating the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, fore-
runner of the New England Emigrant Aid Company.
Within a year, according to the so-called "Ministers'
Memorials" that it circulated in July 1855 to nearly all
New England clergymen, the Company had sent out "two
or three thousand settlers" who had established six towns
in Kansas. When Thayer visited Hartford on November
14 of the same year, he raised $5000 to support the work;
the following day, addressing a large group of citizens in
New Haven, he obtained $1600 more.3

By that time Free Soil sentiment was running high in
the latter city. Under the leadership of Charles Lines, a
Kansas Company of sixty members was organized to emi-
grate to the territory, and many meetings were held to
raise money for them and to bid them farewell. Among
the speakers at the final meeting in the North Church was
Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Plymouth Church of
the Pilgrims in Brooklyn and brother-in-law to John
Hooker. Despite the fact that an admission fee was
charged, the church was packed. Speakers let it be known
that the colonists needed rifles for protection against
"bears, wolves, panthers, robbers, and murderers." Pro-
fessor Benjamin Silliman of Yale pledged one Sharps
rifle; the Reverend Samuel W. S. Dutton, minister of the
church, pledged another, for one of his deacons who had
joined the band. Beecher pledged twenty-five from his
church if the number were matched at the meeting. Amid

178 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

great enthusiasm, enough were promised to arm the entire
company, while all present sang the "Emigrant Song" to
the air of "Auld Lang Syne." Women gave boxes of cloth-
ing; men donated money for provisions. The company
thereafter was known as the "Rifle Christians," and the
Sharps rifle was sometimes referred to as "Beecher's
Bible." *

These dramatic events were only symptoms of a
ground swell of antislavery feeling that swept the entire
state. More and more people were coming to believe that,
in the words of the Reverend Leonard Bacon, a mild aboli-
tionist of New Haven, "slavery was wrong, and that any
man who hoped to extend it was doing what he knew was
wrong." Officially, Connecticut declared its position by
adopting a new and stronger personal liberty law in 1854
— one whose true purpose was to prevent the execution of
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The state's Whigs were
solidly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and what it
stood for, and they were equally opposed to the incumbent
Democratic Administration. Soon enough, the bulk of
them found a more comfortable political home in the new
Republican Party, which openly avowed antislavery prin-
ciples. It carried the state for Fremont in 1856, but the
country elected the Democratic candidate.5

Two days after the inauguration of President James
Buchanan, Fremont's opponent, the Supreme Court
handed down its far-reaching decision in the case of Dred
Scott v. Sanford. Scott, a Negro owned by an army sur-
geon, had been taken from Missouri to Illinois and later
to the territory of Minnesota. After his return to Missouri,
he had brought suit for his freedom, on the ground of his
residence in two places where slavery was illegal — Illinois,
free under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and Min-
nesota, free under the terms of the Missouri Compromise.

THE ROAD IN FULL SWING 179

The case, financed by abolitionists, had reached the high-
est tribunal on appeal.

With Chief Justice Roger B. Taney as its spokesman,
a majority of the Court found against Scott, on three
grounds. First, as a Negro, he was not a United States
citizen but only a chattel or thing, and hence had no right
to bring suit in a federal court. Second, the laws of Illinois
had no bearing on his case because he was a resident of
another state. Third, his stay in Minnesota was irrelevant
because Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the
territories. It therefore followed that the Missouri Com-
promise was not only void and inoperative under the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, but unconstitutional as well. Hence,
slavery was national in scope, while freedom was sectional,
and any part of the country might become slaveholding
if slaveholders should settle therein.6

Whatever the elation of the South at this ruling, the
reaction in Connecticut was one of shock. The Nutmeg
State had had a similar case of its own — in which the
ex-slave James Mars was involved in a minor role — some
twenty years previously, and its court's decision had gone
quite the other way. In that case, Nancy Jackson, a
Georgia slave who had been brought by her owner to Hart-
ford for a two-year stay, claimed freedom under the law
of 1774 that prohibited the importation of any slave "to
be disposed of, left or sold within this state"; and the
Supreme Court of Errors had found in her favor. The
decision in the Dred Scott case went in exactly the opposite
direction, which neither the people of Connecticut nor its
legislature could follow.7

At its session in the spring of 1857, the General Assem-
bly made its position plain. It adopted a series of resolu-
tions covering a number of points. As to the Dred Scott
decision itself, "Nothing was decided authoritatively

180 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

except that Dred Scott could not sue in a Federal Court,"
and "all beyond this was extra judicial and of no binding
force" because "extra judicial opinions of the United
States Supreme Court are not law." Supreme Court jus-
tices who volunteered opinions not necessary to the deci-
sions before them were deserving of censure. It was a right
and a duty to resist the extension of slavery into the terri-
tories. In addition to adopting these resolutions, the
Assembly expressed its sympathy with "the Free State
settlers in Kansas." It then enacted the last law on slavery
in the state's history, one of the many in which it expressed
its opinion to the federal government : 8

Any person having been held to service as a slave in any
other state or country, not having escaped from any
other state of the United States in which he was held to
service or labor under the laws thereof, coming into this
state or now being therein, shall forthwith be and become
free.

In this legislative act and its resolutions, the General
Assembly gave official expression to the views already
stated by newspapers of the state, in editorials of which
the following are examples :

Never in the history of the American Government has
there been so unrighteous a decision by the Supreme
Court of the United States, as the one given in the Dred
Scott case. It not only opens the Territory of Slavery,
but allows it to exist in those States which have been
called Free, as the master, by this decision, can take his
property [slaves] into any State of the Union for a
temporary sojourn, and then carry them back to the
State from whence they came, without let or hindrance.9

There is at least one point in this decision which the
people in some of the States will find it difficult to com-

THE ROAD IN FULL, SWING 181

prehend. It is that which declares the negro is not a cit-
izen. In some States the negro is not a citizen. In some
States the negro is a citizen, and entitled to all the priv-
iliges of citizenship. . . . The State in which they live
makes them citizens, and if they are citizens there, accord-
ing to the plain Anglo-Saxon of the Constitution of the
United States, they are citizens of the United States.10

While the General Assembly and the press gave utter-
ance to statements like these, Connecticut's Underground
Railroad found plenty of passengers. Old centers were
more active than ever — in Farmington, any runaway who
arrived was sure of food, lodging, and a lift xl — and new
agents joined the ranks. In New Haven, a prosperous
merchant named Thomas R. Trowbridge furnished a room
in his house for the use of north-bound fugitives after
1857. The Honorable Joseph Sheldon of the same city
also established a station around 1860, working with the
Reverend Samuel W. S. Dutton as a "most efficient coad-
jutor." 12 In June 1855, when a slave-hunter cornered and
seized a runaway at Dayville in Windham County, "the
citizens there interfered and the fugitive escaped." 13 A
new station also came into being just over the state line,
near Westerly, but for rather different reasons. A group
of free Rhode Island Negroes, terrified by the implications
of the Dred Scott decision, literally took to the woods. In
a heavily overgrown, out-of-the-way spot near the Con-
necticut border, they set up a sort of fugitive camp of
stone huts topped with roofs of saplings and sod. Here
they lived and did their simple cooking in the open, with
little chance of being discovered by any traveling slave-
hunter ; and here they began to receive newly arrived fugi-
tives whom they sent on by established Underground
lines.1*

New stations like these, set up and managed with less

182 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

secrecy than had formerly been necessary, were evidence
of Connecticut's increased tolerance toward the antislavery
movement. Threatened by no tar and feathers, marched
out of town by no drum and fife, abolitionist ministers now
preached openly and defiantly against the encroachments
of the slave power. A few weeks after the signing of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Reverend Charles P. Bush of
Norwich began his Sunday sermon with the words : "Thou
shall not deliver unto his master the servant which is
escaped from his master unto thee"; and he went on to
denounce the Fugitive Slave Law as "a gigantic national
sin, for which every reflecting Christian must feel that we
have reason to fear Divine judgments." 15 Three years
later, the Dred Scott decision led the Reverend Leverett
Griggs of Bristol to preach on the topic "Fugitives from
Slavery." In his opinion, it was a simple Christian duty to
help the runaway to freedom : 16

Fugitives from American Slavery should receive the sym-
pathy and aid of all lovers of freedom. If they come to
our door, we should be ready to feed, and clothe, and give
them shelter, and help them on their way. If we make
the Bible our rule of life, — if we are willing to do to others
as we would they should do to us, we can have no difficulty
on this subject.

Similarly, in a sermon titled "Slavery Viewed in the Light
of the Golden Rule," the Reverend R. P. Stanton of Nor-
wich in 1860 exhorted his congregation, in the familiar
abolitionist phrase, to "remember those in bonds as bound
with them" ; and he described the Fugitive Slave Law as
"an accursed enactment, which, it would seem, no beings
but demons could enact, and no beings but demons could
obey." 17

In fact, the law was being more and more widely defied

THE ROAD IN FULL SWING 183

— sometimes even by persons in official positions of law
enforcement. In September of 1859, a runaway who came
by sea benefited from this state of affairs. Stowing away
in the cargo of a vessel at Wilmington, North Carolina,
with "two pounds of crackers and a piece of cheese," he
subsisted on this monotonous fare for twelve days as the
ship worked north along the coast. At the mouth of the
Mystic River he came out on deck, where the captain
immediately apprehended him and summoned his crew. The
Negro, however, managed to leap over the bow and swim
ashore, where he set off for New London. The captain,
convinced that he was a fugitive, followed in pursuit. In
New London he succeeded in finding the man, seized him,
and "brought him at once before a United States Com-
missioner at the Custom House." Word of this happening
spread quickly through town, and Judge Brandegee of
the New London Police Court hurried to the scene "with
a large number of prominent citizens." He spoke directly
to the runaway: "Do you wish to stay here or go free?"
To go free, the man replied promptly. "Go then!" said
the Judge; and despite the efforts of the officials to pre-
vent him, "he went." 18

Such was Connecticut on the eve of the Civil War — a
state where legislature, pulpit, press, and people were firm
in their opposition to slavery and where the fugitive might
find help in many places, from a United States Senator
or a local police magistrate, a city merchant or a village
pastor, numerous farmers or any free Negro at all. Yet
it was also a state where the free Negro, although recog-
nized as a citizen, was far from enjoying the opportunities
open to others. His economic state was, in general, pre-
carious; the schooling available to him was likely to end
all too soon ; in the community at large he was accepted
as something less than an equal. He did not even have the

184 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

right to vote, and this as a matter of the popular will. In
1857 a referendum was held on the subject of extending
the franchise to colored people ; the result throughout the
state was 5553 votes favorable, 19,148 opposed — roughly
22 per cent for, 78 per cent against. It is not surprising
that Windham County, where abolition sentiment was
more widespread than anywhere else in the state, cast the
highest proportion of "aye" votes, but even there it was
only 36 per cent. Hartford County came next, with 34 per
cent for, 66 per cent against; New Haven and Fairfield
counties were lowest on the list, showing only 11 and 10 per
cent favorable votes respectively. The Middlesex Repub-
lican found this outcome deplorable : 19

Massachusetts, and we believe all the rest of the New
England States but our own, can come, if need be, to the
door of the Supreme Court of the United States and
claim equal rights for the colored population. Even New
York can do the same without a blush, provided they
have freehold estates to a certain amount. Not so, how-
ever, with Connecticut. It makes our own cheek tingle,
when we reflect, that after she permitted them to help
fight the battles of our Revolution, and to man our ships
of war in the last conflict with England, after also, she
had allowed them the full rights of citizenship ; she then,
on amending or rather adopting her present Constitution
excluded them wholly from the elective franchise.

Nonetheless it was evident that, although Connecticut's
Yankees were generally opposed to slavery, prejudice
against colored people was still widespread and powerful.
Even after the Civil War began, the Negro was for a
time not allowed to play the fighting man's part. He was,
according to one Connecticut view, too "frivolous, lazy, sen-
sual, and lying to come to the aid of our government." 20

THE ROAD IN FULL SWING 185

Joseph Sheldon of New Haven, who as an Underground
operator had been in position to judge the character and
capacities of colored men, did not agree. Believing that
the time would come when Negro soldiers would be
employed, he quietly assembled a company of thirty or
forty, who met at night for military drill in the basement
of Music Hall. These recruits were pledged to keep their
training secret, but their time came soon. In November
1863 the General Assembly authorized the organization of
Negro units in Connecticut, and almost every man in
Sheldon's troop became a noncommissioned officer in either
the Twenty-ninth or the Thirtieth Regiment. They proved
their fitness and their manhood under fire on the field of
battle.21

By that time, of course, the Underground Railroad
had ceased to exist. Its tracks were abandoned because
there was no more traffic; its stations closed for want of
passengers ; its operators went on with their lives in what-
ever direction their destinies might take them. In place of
the dedicated few who had escorted the lone fugitive
through the night or hidden him in closet or barn, there
were now thousands of young men in blue uniforms who,
all unintentionally, were carrying on the work in the South
itself. Everywhere that Union lines were established, there
was a haven where any slave could find an end to his bond-
age— not because Union generals and soldiers were aboli-
tionists but because the slave, so long as his labor remained
available to the Southern master, was a valuable asset to
the war effort of the Confederacy.22 General Benjamin
Butler set the pattern when in May 1861, with the war
hardly begun, he refused to surrender fugitives because
they were contraband. Two months later he made his posi-
tion clear in a letter to the Secretary of War : 23

186 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

In a loyal State I would put down a servile insurrection.
In a state of rebellion I would confiscate that which was
used to oppose my arms, and take all that property,
which constituted the wealth of that State, and furnished
the means by which war is prosecuted, besides being the
cause of the war ; and if, in so doing, it should be objected
that human beings were brought to the free enjoyment of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, such objection
might not require much consideration.

At the same time General John C. Fremont, in Mis-
souri, proclaimed martial law and freed all slaves belong-
ing to persons in rebellion. Hardly a week thereafter, on
August 6, 1861, Congress passed a Confiscation Act,
which made all property used to aid the rebellion subject
to seizure. These actions, by generals and lawmakers, an-
ticipated the Emancipation Proclamation, and they also
made it inevitable. The Proclamation, when it came, turned
what was already a practical program into an official pol-
icy. But it did more than that; it transformed the war
from one whose purpose was merely the preservation of
the Union to one that had the nature of a moral conflict —
a war not only for territorial integrity but for the larger
cause of human freedom.24

Not everyone in Connecticut was pleased by this devel-
opment. The President, said the Hartford Courant, had
laid the axe to the root of the tree: "The Proclamation
meets our views both in what it does and in what it omits
to do. Its limitations show that President Lincoln means
to preserve good faith toward the loyal border slave states,
so long as they are loyal, their slaves are safe." 25 The
Waterbury American hoped that the Proclamation, "like
bread cast upon the waters, will we trust, bring forth good
fruits after many days." 26 But the Middletown Sentinel
and Witness feared that "the immediate emancipation of

THE ROAD IN FULL SWING 187

the slaves would not aid the Negro, either morally, physi-
cally, or politically, but it would by flooding the North
with Africans to compete in every department of labor with
the white mechanics, and artisans, impoverish and degrade
the latter." 27 The Norwich Aurora thought that "this Act
of Lincoln's is the culmination of his stupidity." 28 The
New Haven Columbian Weekly Register, a Democratic
organ, was merely vituperative : 29

"God bless Abraham Lincoln" will be repeated by all the
tribe of Negro worshipping fanatics, fools and fiends in
human shape. History does not furnish a more palpable
instance of folly than the usurpation by which the admin-
istration has undertaken the championship of the aboli-
tion fanaticism.

But to James Lindsey Smith, who knew much better than
any Connecticut editor the truth about slavery, the Proc-
lamation came as the fulfillment of a cherished dream:
"Glory to God, peace on earth, and good will to men —
the year of jubilee has come!" 30

The war at last was fought to its end, and it was fol-
lowed in short order by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth Amendments. Slavery was gone from the coun-
try forever ; full citizenship and the franchise were guar-
anteed to all Americans, regardless of color, as matters
of constitutional right. It is not the purpose of this book
to review the sad history of subterfuge, evasion, discrim-
ination, and segregation that has unfolded since then. But
one may hope that the zealous men, black and white, who
manned the Underground Railroad lines of the past have
found their twentieth-century counterparts in the sit-in
demonstrators and the freedom riders of today.

APPENDICES

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APPENDIX

1

NARRATIVE OF MR. NEHEMIAH CAULKINS
OF WATERFORD, CONNECTICUT

I spent eleven winters, between the years 1824 and 1835,
in the state of North Carolina, mostly in the vicinity of
Wilmington; and four out of the eleven on the estate of
Mr. John Swan, five or six miles from that place. There
were on his plantation about seventy slaves, male and
female: some were married, and others lived together as
man and wife, without even a mock ceremony. With their
owners generally, it is a matter of indifference; the mar-
riage of slaves not being recognized by the slave code. The
slaves, however, think much of being married by a clergy-
man.

The cabins or huts of the slaves were small, and were
built principally by the slaves themselves, as they could
find time on Sundays and moonlight nights ; they went into
the swamps, cut the logs, backed or hauled them to the
quarters, and put up their cabins.

When I first knew Mr. Swan's plantation, his overseer
was a man who had been a Methodist minister. He treated
the slaves with great cruelty. His reason for leaving the

Reprinted from American Slavery As It Is, compiled by Theo-
dore Weld (New York, 1839).

192 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

ministry and becoming an overseer, I was informed, was
this : his wife died, at which providence he was so enraged,
that he swore he would not preach for the Lord another
day. This man continued on the plantation about three
years; at the close of which, on settlement of accounts,
Mr. Swan owed him about $400, for which he turned out to
him a negro woman, and about twenty acres of land. He
built a log hut, and took the woman to live with him ; since
which, I have been at his hut, and seen four or five mulatto
children. . . .

It is customary in that part of the country, to let the
hogs run in the woods. On one occasion a slave caught a
pig about two months old, which he carried to his quarters.
The overseer, getting information of the fact, went to the
field where he was at work, and ordered him to come to him.
The slave at once suspected it was something about the
pig, and fearing punishment, dropped his hoe and ran
for the woods. He had got but a few rods, when the over-
seer raised his gun, loaded with duck shot, and brought
him down. It is a common practice for overseers to go into
the field armed with a gun or pistols, and sometimes both.
He was taken up by the slaves and carried to the planta-
tion hospital, and the physician sent for. A physician was
employed by the year to take care of the sick or wounded
slaves. In about six weeks this slave got better, and was
able to come out of the hospital. He came to the mill where
I was at work, and asked me to examine his body, which
I did, and counted twenty-six duck shot still remaining
in his flesh, though the doctor had removed a number while
he was laid up.

There was a slave on Mr. Swan's plantation, by the
name of Harry, who, during the absence of his master,
ran away and secreted himself in the woods. This the
slaves sometimes do, when the master is absent for several

APPENDIX 1 193

weeks, to escape the cruel treatment of the overseer. It is
common for them to make preparations, by secreting a
mortar, a hatchet, some cooking utensils, and whatever
things they can get that will enable them to live while they
are in the woods or swamps. Harry staid about three
months, and lived by robbing the rice grounds, and by
such other means as came in his way. The slaves generally
know where the runaway is secreted, and visit him at night
and on Sundays. On the return of his master, some of the
slaves were sent for Harry. When he came home he was
seized and confined in the stocks. The stocks were built
in the barn, and consisted of two heavy pieces of timber,
ten or more feet in length, and about seven inches wide;
the lower one, on the floor, has a number of holes or places
cut in it, for the ankles ; the upper piece, being of the same
dimensions, is fastened at one end by a hinge, and is
brought down after the ankles are placed in the holes, and
secured by a clasp and padlock at the other end. In this
manner the person is left to sit on the floor. Harry was
kept in the stocks day and night for a week, and flogged
every morning. After this, he was taken out one morning,
a log chain fastened around his neck, the two ends drag-
ging on the ground, and he was sent to the field, to do
his task with the other slaves. At night he was again put
in the stocks, in the morning he was sent to the field in the
same manner, and thus dragged out another week.

The overseer was a very miserly fellow, and restricted
his wife in what are considered the comforts of life — such
as tea, sugar, &c. To make up for this, she set her wits to
work, and, by the help of a slave, named Joe, used to take
from the plantation whatever she could conveniently, and
watch her opportunity during her husband's absence, and
send Joe to sell them and buy for her such things as she
directed. Once when her husband was away, she told Joe

194 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

to kill and dress one of the pigs, sell it, and get her some
tea, sugar, &c. Joe did as he was bid, and she gave him
the offal for his services. When Galloway returned, not
suspecting his wife, he asked her if she knew what had
become of his pig. She told him she suspected one of the
slaves, naming him, had stolen it, for she had heard a pig
squeal the evening before. The overseer called the slave
up, and charged him with the theft. He denied it, and said
he knew nothing about it. The overseer still charged him
with it, and told him he would give him one week to think
of it, and if he did not confess the theft, or find out who
did steal the pig, he would flog every negro on the plan-
tation ; before the week was up it was ascertained that Joe
had killed the pig. He was called up and questioned, and
admitted that he had done so, and told the overseer that
he did it by the order of Mrs. Galloway, and that she
directed him to buy some sugar, &c. with the money. Mrs.
Galloway gave Joe the lie; and he was terribly flogged.
Joe told me he had been several times to the smoke-house
with Mrs. G, and taken hams and sold them, which her
husband told me he supposed were stolen by the negroes
on a neighboring plantation. Mr. Swan, hearing of the
circumstance, told me he believed Joe's story, but that his
statement would not be taken as proof ; and if every slave
on the plantation told the same story it could not be
received as evidence against a white person.

To show the manner in which old and wornout slaves
are sometimes treated, I will state a fact. Galloway owned
a man about seventy years of age. The old man was sick
and went to his hut ; laid himself down on some straw with
his feet to the fire, covered by a piece of an old blanket,
and there lay four or five days, groaning in great distress,
without any attention being paid him by his master, until
death ended his miseries ; he was then taken out and buried

APPENDIX 1 195

with as little ceremony and respect as would be paid to
a brute.

There is a practice prevalent among the planters, of
letting a negro off from severe and long-continued punish-
ment on account of the intercession of some white person,
who pleads in his behalf, that he believes the negro will
behave better; that he promises well, and he believes he
will keep his promise, &c. The planters sometimes get tired
of punishing a negro, and, wanting his services in the field,
they get some white person to come, and, in the presence
of the slave, intercede for him. At one time a negro, named
Charles, was confined in the stocks in the building where I
was at work, and had been severely whipped several times.
He begged me to intercede for him and try to get him
released. I told him I would ; and when his master came in
to whip him again, I went up to him and told him I had
been talking with Charles, and he had promised to behave
better, &c, and requested him not to punish him any more,
but to let him go. He then said to Charles, "As Mr. Caul-
kins has been pleading for you, I will let you go on his
account ;" and accordingly released him.

Women are generally shown some little indulgence for
three or four weeks previous to childbirth; they are at
such times not often punished if they do not finish the task
assigned them; it is, in some cases, passed over with a
severe reprimand, and sometimes without any notice being
taken of it. They are generally allowed four weeks after
the birth of a child, before they are compelled to go into
the field, they then take the child with them, attended some-
times by a little girl or boy, from the age of four to six, to
take care of it while the mother, after nursing, lays it
under a tree, or by the side of a fence, and goes to her task,
returning at stated intervals to nurse it. While I was on
this plantation, a little negro girl, six years of age,

196 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

destroyed the life of a child about two months old, which
was left in her care. It seems this little nurse, so called,
got tired of her charge and the labor of carrying it to the
quarters at night, the mother being obliged to work as
long as she could see. One evening she nursed the infant
at sunset as usual, and sent it to the quarters at night.
The little girl, on her way home, had to cross a run, or
brook, which led down into the swamp ; when she came to
the brook she followed it into the swamp, then took the
infant and plunged it head foremost into the water and
mud, where it stuck fast ; she there left it and went to the
negro quarters. When the mother came in from the field,
she asked the girl where the child was ; she told her she had
brought it home, but did not know where it was ; the over-
seer was immediately informed, search was made, and it
was found as above stated, and dead. The little girl was
shut up in the barn, and confined there two or three weeks,
when a speculator came along and bought her for two
hundred dollars.

The slaves are obliged to work from daylight till dark,
as long as they can see. When they have tasks assigned,
which is often the case, a few of the strongest and most
expert, sometimes finish them before sunset; others will
be obliged to work till eight or nine o'clock in the evening.
All must finish their tasks or take a flogging. The whip
and gun, or pistol, are companions of the overseer; the
former he uses very frequently upon the negroes, during
their hours of labor, without regard to age or sex. Scarcely
a day passed while I was on the plantation, in which some
of the slaves were not whipped; I do not mean that they
were struck a few blows merely, but had a set flogging.
The same labor is commonly assigned to men and women,
— such as digging ditches in the rice marshes, clearing up
land, chopping cord-wood, threshing, &c. I have known

APPENDIX 1 197

the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in
the morning, and work as late as they could see at night,
threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing
machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer,
they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and
deposit it in the granary.

The allowance of clothing on this plantation to each
slave, was given out at Christmas for the year, and con-
sisted of one pair of coarse shoes, and enough coarse cloth
to make a jacket and trowsers. If the man has a wife she
makes it up ; if not, it is made up in the house. The slaves
on this plantation, being near Wilmington, procured them-
selves extra clothing by working Sundays and moonlight
nights, cutting cord-wood in the swamps, which they had to
back about a quarter of a mile to the river; they would
then get a permit from their master, and taking the wood
in their canoes, carry it to Wilmington, and sell it to the
vessels, or dispose of it as they best could, and with the
money buy an old jacket of the sailors, some coarse cloth
for a shirt, &c. They sometimes gather the moss from the
trees, which they cleanse and take to market. The women
receive their allowance of the same kind of cloth which the
men have. This they make into a frock; if they have any
under garments they must procure them for themselves.
When the slaves get a permit to leave the plantation, they
sometimes make all ring again by singing the following
significant ditty, which shows that after all there is a flow
of spirits in the human breast which for a while, at least,
enables them to forget their wretchedness.

Hurra, for good ole Massa,

He giv me de pass to go to de city

Hurra, for good ole Missis,

She bile de pot, and giv me de licker.
Hurra, I'm goin to de city

198 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Every Saturday night the slaves receive their allow-
ance of provisions, which must last them till the next
Saturday night. "Potatoe time," as it is called, begins
about the middle of July. The slave may measure for him-
self, the overseer being present, half a bushel of sweet
potatoes, and heap the measure as long as they will lie on ;
I have, however, seen the overseer, if he think the negro
is getting too many, kick the measure ; and if any fall off,
tell him he has got his measure. No salt is furnished them
to eat with their potatoes. When rice or corn is given, they
give them a little salt; sometimes half a pint of molasses
is given, but not often. The quantity of rice, which is of the
small, broken, unsaleable kind, is one peck. When corn is
given them, their allowance is the same, and if they get it
ground, (Mr. Swan had a mill on his plantation,) they
must give one quart for grinding, thus reducing their
weekly allowance to seven quarts. When fish (mullet) were
plenty, they were allowed, in addition, one fish. As to meat,
they seldom had any. I do not think they had an allowance
of meat oftener than once in two or three months, and then
the quantity was very small. When they went into the field
to work, they took some of the meal or rice and a pot with
them; the pots were given to an old woman, who placed
two poles parallel, set the pots on them, and kindled a fire
underneath for cooking; she took salt with her and sea-
soned the messes as she thought proper. When their break-
fast was ready, which was generally about ten or eleven
o'clock, they were called from labor, ate, and returned to
work; in the afternoon, dinner was prepared in the same
way. They had but two meals a day while in the field ; if
they wanted more, they cooked for themselves after they
returned to their quarters at night. At the time of killing
hogs on the plantation, the pluck, entrails, and blood were
given to the slaves.

APPENDIX 1 199

When I first went upon Mr. Swan's plantation, I saw
a slave in shackles or fetters, which were fastened around
each ankle and firmly riveted, connected together by a
chain. To the middle of this chain he had fastened a string,
so as in a manner to suspend them and keep them from
galling his ankles. This slave, whose name was Frank,
was an intelligent, good looking man, and a very good
mechanic. There was nothing vicious in his character, but
he was one of those high-spirited and daring men, that
whips, chains, fetters, and all the means of cruelty in the
power of slavery, could not subdue. Mr. S. had employed
a Mr. Beckwith to repair a boat, and told him Frank was
a good mechanic, and he might have his services. Frank
was sent for, his shackles still on. Mr. Beckwith set him to
work making trunnels, &c. I was employed in putting up a
building, and after Mr. Beckwith had done with Frank,
he was sent for to assist me. Mr. Swan sent him to a black-
smith's shop and had his shackles cut off with a cold
chisel. Frank was afterwards sold to a cotton planter.

I will relate one circumstance, which shows the little
regard that is paid to the feelings of the slave. During the
time that Mr. Isaiah Rogers was superintending the build-
ing of a rice machine, one of the slaves complained of a
severe toothache. Swan asked Mr. Rogers to take his
hammer and knock out the tooth.

There was a slave on the plantation named Ben, a
waiting man. I occupied a room in the same hut, and had
frequent conversations with him. Ben was a kind-hearted
man, and, I believe, a Christian; he would always ask a
blessing before he sat down to eat, and was in the constant
practice of praying morning and night. — One day when I
was at the hut, Ben was sent for to go to the house. Ben
sighed deeply and went. He soon returned with a girl about
seventeen years of age, whom one of Mr. Swan's daughters

200 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

had ordered him to flog. He brought her into the room
where I was, and told her to stand there while he went into
the next room : I heard him groan again as he went. While
there I heard his voice, and he was engaged in prayer.
After a few minutes he returned with a large cow-hide, and
stood before the girl, without saying a word. I concluded
he wished me to leave the hut, which I did; and imme-
diately after I heard the girl scream. At every blow she
would shriek, "Do, Ben! oh do, Ben!" This is a common
expression of the slaves to the person whipping them : "Do,
Massa !" or, "Do, Missus !"

After she had gone, I asked Ben what she was whipped
for: he told me she had done something to displease her
young missus ; and in boxing her ears, and otherwise beat-
ing her, she had scratched her finger by a pin in the girl's
dress, for which she sent her to be flogged. I asked him if
he stripped her before flogging; he said, yes; he did not
like to do this, but was obliged to: he said he was once
ordered to whip a woman, which he did without stripping
her : on her return to the house, her mistress examined her
back ; and not seeing any marks, he was sent for, and asked
him if he had made her pull her clothes off; he said, No.
She then told him, that when he whipped any more of the
women, he must make them strip off their clothes, as well
as the men, and flog them on their bare backs, or he should
be flogged himself.

Ben often appeared very gloomy and sad: I have
frequently heard him, when in his room, mourning over
his condition, and exclaim, "Poor African slave! Poor
African slave !" Whipping was so common an occurrence
on this plantation, that it would be too great a repetition
to state the many and severe floggings I have seen inflicted
on the slaves. They were flogged for not performing their
tasks, for being careless, slow, or not in time, for going to

APPENDIX 1 201

the fire to warm, &c. &c. ; and it often seemed as if occa-
sions were sought as an excuse for punishing them.

On one occasion, I heard the overseer charge the hands
to be at a certain place the next morning at sun-rise. I
was present in the morning, in company with my brother,
when the hands arrived. Joe, the slave already spoken of,
came running, all out of breath, about five minutes behind
the time, when, without asking any questions, the overseer
told him to take off his jacket. Joe took off his jacket.
He had on a piece of a shirt; he told him to take it off:
Joe took it off : he then whipped him with a heavy cow-hide
full six feet long. At every stroke Joe would spring from
the ground, and scream, "O my God! Do, Massa Gallo-
way !" My brother was so exasperated, that he turned to
me and said, "If I were Joe, I would kill the overseer if I
knew I should be shot the next minute."

In the winter the horn blew at about four in the morn-
ing, and all the threshers were required to be at the thresh-
ing floor in fifteen minutes after. They had to go about a
quarter of a mile from their quarters. Galloway would
stand near the entrance, and all who did not come in time
would get a blow over the back or head as heavy as he could
strike. I have seen him, at such times, follow after them,
striking furiously a number of blows, and every one fol-
lowed by their screams. I have seen the women go to their
work after such a flogging, crying and taking on most
piteously.

It is almost impossible to believe that human nature
can endure such hardships and sufferings as the slaves
have to go through ; I have seen them driven into a ditch
in a rice swamp to bail out the water, in order to put down
a flood-gate, when they had to break the ice, and there
stand in the water among the ice until it was bailed out.
I have often known the hands to be taken from the field,

202 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

sent down the river in flats or boats to Wilmington, absent
from twenty-four to thirty hours, without any thing to
eat, no provision being made for these occasions.

Galloway kept medicine on hand, that in case any of
the slaves were sick, he could give it to them without send-
ing for the physician ; but he always kept a good look out
that they did not sham sickness. When any of them excited
his suspicions, he would make them take the medicine in
his presence, and would give them a rap on the top of
the head, to make them swallow it. A man once came to him,
of whom he said he was suspicious : he gave him two potions
of salts, and fastened him in the stocks for the night. His
medicine soon began to operate ; and there he lay in all his
filth till he was taken out the next day.

One day, Mr. Swan beat a slave severely, for alleged
carelessness in letting a boat get adrift. The slave was told
to secure the boat: whether he took sufficient means for
this purpose I do not know; he was not allowed to make
any defence. Mr. Swan called him up, and asked why he
did not secure the boat : he pulled off his hat and began to
tell his story. Swan told him he was a damned liar, and
commenced beating him over the head with a hickory cane,
and the slave retreated backwards; Swan followed him
about two rods, threshing him over the head with the
hickory as he went.

As I was one day standing near some slaves who were
threshing, the driver, thinking one of the women did not
use her flail quick enough, struck her over the head; the
end of the whip hit her in the eye. I thought at the time
he had put it out ; but, after poulticing and doctoring for
some days, she recovered. Speaking to him about it, he
said that he once struck a slave so as to put one of her
eyes entirely out.

A patrol is kept upon each estate, and every slave

APPENDIX 1 203

found off the plantation without a pass is whipped on the
spot. I knew a slave who started without a pass, one night,
for a neighboring plantation, to see his wife: he was
caught, tied to a tree, and flogged. He stated his business
to the patrol, who was well acquainted with him, but all to
no purpose. I spoke to the patrol about it afterwards : he
said he knew the negro, that he was a very clever fellow,
but he had to whip him; for, if he let him pass, he must
another, &c. He stated that he had sometimes caught and
flogged four in a night.

In conversation with Mr. Swan about runaway slaves,
he stated to me the following fact : — A slave, by the name
of Luke, was owned in Wilmington ; he was sold to a spec-
ulator and carried to Georgia. After an absence of about
two months the slave returned ; he watched an opportunity
to enter his old master's house when the family were absent,
no one being at home but a young waiting man. Luke
went to the room where his master kept his arms ; took his
gun, with some ammunition, and went into the woods. On
the return of his master, the waiting man told him what
had been done: this threw him into a violent passion; he
swore he would kill Luke, or lose his own life. He loaded
another gun, took two men, and made search, but could
not find him: he then advertised him, offering a large
reward if delivered to him or lodged in jail. His neighbors,
however, advised him to offer a reward of two hundred
dollars for him dead or alive, which he did. Nothing how-
ever was heard of him for some months. Mr. Swan said, one
of his slaves ran away, and was gone eight or ten weeks ;
on his return he said he had found Luke, and that he had
a rifle, two pistols, and a sword.

I left the plantation in the spring, and returned to the
north; when I went out again, the next fall, I asked Mr.
Swan if any thing had been heard of Luke ; he said he was

204 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

shot, and related to me the manner of his death, as follows :
— Luke went to one of the plantations, and entered a hut
for something to eat. Being fatigued, he sat down and
fell asleep. There was only a woman in the hut at the time :
as soon as she saw he was asleep, she ran and told her
master, who took his rifle, and called two white men on
another plantation : the three, with their rifles, then went
to the hut, and posted themselves in different positions, so
that they could watch the door. When Luke waked up he
went to the door to look out, and saw them with their
rifles, he stepped back and raised his gun to his face. They
called to him to surrender ; and stated that they had him
in their power, and said he had better give up. He said he
would not ; and if they tried to take him, he would kill one
of them ; for, if he gave up, he knew they would kill him,
and he was determined to sell his life as dear as he could.
They told him, if he should shoot one of them, the other
two would certainly kill him : he replied, he was determined
not to give up, and kept his gun moving from one to the
other ; and while his rifle was turned toward one, another,
standing in a different direction, shot him through the
head, and he fell lifeless to the ground.

There was another slave shot while I was there; this
man had run away, and had been living in the woods a long
time, and it was not known where he was, till one day he
was discovered by two men, who went on the large island
near Belvidere to hunt turkeys ; they shot him and carried
his head home.

It is common to keep dogs on the plantations, to pur-
sue and catch runaway slaves. I was once bitten by one of
them. I went to the overseer's house, the dog lay in the
piazza, as soon as I put my foot upon the floor, he sprang
and bit me just above the knee, but not severely; he tore
my pantaloons badly. The overseer apologized for his dog,

APPENDIX 1 205

saying he never knew him to bite a white man before. He
said he once had a dog, when he lived on another planta-
tion, that was very useful to him in hunting runaway
negroes. He said that a slave on the plantation once ran
away ; as soon as he found the course he took, he put the
dog on the track, and he soon came so close upon him that
the man had to climb a tree, he followed with his gun, and
brought the slave home.

The slaves have a great dread of being sold and carried
south. It is generally said, and I have no doubt of its
truth, that they are much worse treated farther south.

The following are a few among the many facts related
to me while I lived among the slaveholders. The names of
the planters and plantations I shall not give, as they did
not come under my own observation. I however place the
fullest confidence in their truth.

A planter not far from Mr. Swan's employed an over-
seer to whom he paid $400 a year ; he became dissatisfied
with him, because he did not drive the slaves hard enough,
and get more work out of them. He therefore sent to South
Carolina, or Georgia, and got a man to whom he paid I
believe $800 a year. He proved to be a cruel fellow, and
drove the slaves almost to death. There was a slave on this
plantation, who had repeatedly run away, and had been
severely flogged every time. The last time he was caught,
a hole was dug in the ground, and he buried up to the
chin, his arms being secured down by his sides. He was kept
in this situation four or five days.

The following was told me by an intimate friend; it
took place on a plantation containing about one hundred
slaves. One day the owner ordered the women into the barn,
he then went in among them, whip in hand, and told them
he meant to flog them all to death ; they began immediately
to cry out "What have I done Massa? What have I done

206 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Massa?" He replied; "D n you, I will let you know

what you have done, you don't breed, I haven't had a
young one from one of you for several months." They told
him they could not breed while they had to work in the
rice ditches. (The rice grounds are low and marshy, and
have to be drained, and while digging or clearing the
ditches, the women had to work in mud and water from
one to two feet in depth ; they were obliged to draw up and
secure their frocks about their waist, to keep them out of
the water, in this manner they frequently had to work from
daylight in the morning till it was so dark they could see
no longer.) After swearing and threatening' for some time,
he told them to tell the overseer's wife, when they got in
that way, and he would put them upon the land to work.

This same planter had a female slave who was a mem-
ber of the Methodist Church ; for a slave she was intelligent
and conscientious. He proposed a criminal intercourse with
her. She would not comply. He left her and sent for the
overseer, and told him to have her flogged. It was done.
Not long after, he renewed his proposal. She again refused.
She was again whipped. He then told her why she had been
twice flogged, and told her he intended to whip her till
she should yield. The girl, seeing that her case was hope-
less, her back smarting with the scourging she had received,
and dreading a repetition, gave herself up to be the victim
of his brutal lusts.

One of the slaves on another plantation, gave birth to
a child which lived but two or three weeks. After its death
the planter called the woman to him, and asked her how
she came to let the child die; said it was all owing to her
carelessness, and that he meant to flog her for it. She told
him with all the feeling of a mother, the circumstances of
its death. But her story availed her nothing against the
savage brutality of her master. She was severely whipped.

APPENDIX 1 207

A healthy child four months old was then considered worth
$100 in North Carolina.

The foregoing facts were related to me by white per-
sons of character and respectability. The following fact
was related to me on a plantation where I have spent con-
siderable time and where the punishment was inflicted. I
have no doubt of its truth. A slave ran away from his
master, and got as far as Newbern. He took provisions
that lasted him a week ; but having eaten all, he went to a
house to get something to satisfy his hunger. A white man
suspecting him to be a runaway, demanded his pass : as he
had none he was seized and put in Newbern jail. He was
there advertised, his description given, &c. His master saw
the advertisement and sent for him ; when he was brought
back, his wrists were tied together and drawn over his
knees. A stick was then passed over his arms and under his
knees, and he secured in this manner, his trowsers were
then stripped down, and he turned over on his side, and
severely beaten with the paddle, then turned over and
severely beaten on the other side, and then turned back
again, and tortured by another bruising and beating. He
was afterwards kept in the stocks a week, and whipped
every morning.

To show the disgusting pollutions of slavery, and how
it covers with moral filth every thing it touches, I will state
two or three facts, which I have on such evidence I cannot
doubt their truth. A planter offered a white man of my
acquaintance twenty dollars for every one of his female
slaves, whom he would get in the family way. This offer
was no doubt made for the purpose of improving the stock,
on the same principle that farmers endeavour to improve
their cattle by crossing the breed.

Slaves belonging to merchants and others in the city,
often hire their own time, for which they pay various prices

208 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

per week or month, according to the capacity of the slave.
The females who thus hire their time, pursue various modes
of procuring the money ; their master making no inquiry
how they get it, provided the money comes. If it is not
regularly paid they are flogged. Some take in washing, some
cook on board vessels, pick oakum, sell peanuts, &c, while
others, younger and more comely, often resort to the vilest
pursuits. I knew a man from the north who, though mar-
ried to a respectable southern woman, kept two of these
mulatto girls in an upper room at his store ; his wife told
some of her friends that he had not lodged at home for
two weeks together, I have seen these two kept misses, as
they are there called, at his store; he was afterwards
stabbed in an attempt to arrest a runaway slave, and died
in about ten days.

The clergy at the south cringe beneath the corrupting
influence of slavery, and their moral courage is borne down
by it. Not the hypocritical and unprincipled alone, but
even such as can hardly be supposed to be destitute of
sincerity.

Going one morning to the Baptist Sunday school, in
Wilmington, in which I was engaged, I fell in with the
Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, who was going to the Presbyterian
school. I asked him how he could bear to see the little negro
children beating their hoops, hallooing, and running about
the streets, as we then saw them, their moral condition
entirely neglected, while the whites were so carefully gath-
ered into the schools. His reply was substantially this:
"I can't bear it, Mr. Caulkins. I feel as deeply as any one
can on this subject, but what can I do? My hands are
tied." . . .

Emancipation would be safe. I have had eleven winters
to learn the disposition of the slaves, and am satisfied that

APPENDIX 1 209

they would peaceably and cheerfully work for pay. Give
them education, equal and just laws, and they will become
a most interesting people. Oh, let a cry be raised which
shall awaken the conscience of the guilty nation, to demand
for the slaves immediate and unconditional emancipation.

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APPENDIX

2

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AGENTS
IN CONNECTICUT

{Probable agents are indicated by *)

FAIRFIELD COUNTY

Daskam, Benjamin— Stamford
Wakeman, William— Wilton
Weed, Darien

HARTFORD COUNTY

Africanus, Selah*— Hartford
Andrews, Alfred— New Britain
Booth, Horace— New Britain
Clark, Dan-New Britain
Cowles, Horace— Farmington
Dunning, Levi— Farmington

Foster, Hartford

Gabriel, Phineas— Avon
Gillette, Francis-Bloomfield

and Hartford
Hart, Norman— New Britain
Hurlburt, George— Farmington
Hurlburt, Lyman— Farmington
Lewis, Elijah— Farmington
McKee, William— Farmington
North, Henry— New Britain
Norton, J. T.— Farmington
Pond, DeWitt C.-New Britain
Smith, Hannah*— Glastonbury

Stanley, Amon— New Britain
Stanley, Noah-New Britain
Whittlesey, David-New Britain
Williams, Austin-Farmington

LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Blakeslee, Joel-Plymouth
Bull, William-Plymouth
Coe, Jonathan— Winsted
Dunbar, Daniel— Plymouth
McAlpine, Silas H.*-

Winchester
Pettibone, Amos— Norfolk
Roberts, Geradus— New Milford
Sabin, Charles— New Milford
Thayer, Augustine— New

Milford
Tuttle, Uriel-Torrington

MIDDLESEX COUNTY

Augur, Phineas M.-Middlefield
Bailey, Alfred*-Middlefield
Bailey, Russell*-Middlefield
Baldwin, Jesse G.-Middletown
Beman, Jehiel*— Middletown

APPENDIX 2

211

Dickinson, James T.*—

Middlefield
Douglas, Benjamin—

Middletown
Lyman, David*-Middlefield
Lyman, William-Middlefield
Read, George-Deep River
Thomas, Marvin*-Middlefield
Warner, Judge Ely— Chester
Warner, Jonathan— Chester
Work, Alanson*— Middletown

NEW HAVEN COUNTY

Bartlett, A. E. -North Guilford
Beman, Amos— New Haven
Curtiss, Carlos-Southington
Curtiss, Homer— Meriden
Dutton, Samuel W. C.-New

Haven

Frisbie, Southington

Hotchkiss, Milo— Berlin
Isbell, Harlowe— Meriden
Jocelyn, Nathaniel— New

Haven
Jocelyn, Simeon S.— New Haven
Ludlow, Henry— New Haven
Perkins, George W.— Meriden
Porter, Timothy— Waterbury
Sheldon, Joseph— New Haven
Stocking, J. M.-Waterbury
Townsend, Amos— New Haven

Trowbridge, Thomas-New

Haven
Yale, Levi— Meriden
Whitmore, Zolva— North

Guilford

NEW LONDON COUNTY

Caulkins, Nehemiah*—

Waterford
Lee, William— Lisbon
Perry, Harvey— North

Stonington
Roland, Levi P.-Lisbon

TOLLAND COUNTY

Hendee, Andover

WINDHAM COUNTY

Alexander, Prosper-Killingly
Benson, George— Brooklyn
Brown, John— Willimantic
Burleigh, Charles*-Plainfield
Cady, W. W.-Plainfield
Conant, J. A.-Willimantic

Crandall, Canterbury

Fox, Joel— Hampton
Griffin, Ebenezer— Hampton
Lewis, J. A— Willimantic
May, Samuel J.— Brooklyn
Pearl, Phillips— Hampton
Whitcomb, Brooklyn

The eighty-six underground agents listed are documented within
this text.

S5Z5E5E5B5H5HSE5ESESHSHSESH5ESEn5H5H5B5ESZ5H5aSlSE5B5E5HSBSH

APPENDIX

3

SLAVES AND FREE NEGROES IN
CONNECTICUT, 1639- 1860

Year

Naves

Free Negroes

1

—

30

—

700

?

4000

?

6562

?

2759

2801

951

5330

310

6453

97

7844

23

8047

17

8105

1639
1680
1730
1755
1774
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860

7693
8627

Sources: For 1639, Norris Galpin Osborn, History of Connecti-
cut, III (New York, 1925), 318.

For 1680-1774, "Slaves in Waterbury" (pamphlet,
Mattatuck Historical Society, Waterbury, n.d.), 2.

For 1790-1820 and 1840-1860, Steiner, History of
Slavery in Connecticut (Johns Hopkins University
Studies, XI [Baltimore, 1893]), 84.

For 1830, Fifth Census of the United States (Wash-
ington, 1832), 26-29.

i5E5ESH5iSE5a5HSH5ZSHSl£rH5H5iSH5H5H5Bre5H5a5HSEnSH5Z5H5E5E5aS

APPENDIX

4

ANTISLAVERY SOCIETIES IN
CONNECTICUT, 1837

No. of

Mem-

Name

Secretary

Date

bers

B arkhamstead

Nelson Gilbert

April, 1837

50

Brooklyn

Herbert Williams

March, 1835

53

(male)

Brooklyn

F. M. B. Burleigh

July, 1834

22

(female)

Canton

Lancel Foot

25

Chaplin

Deacon Jared Clark

June, 1836

Colebrook

J. H. Rodgers

June, 1836

90

Deep River

Joseph H. Mather

July, 1835

60

East Hampton

28

Farmington

Thomas Cowles

February, 1836

70

(male)

Farmington

40

(female)

Greenville

William H. Coit

1836

80

(male)

Greenville

Miss Louisa Humphrey

January, 1836

37

(female)

214

The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

No. of

Mem-

Name

Secretary

Date

bers

Hanover

Deacon William Lee

April, 1837

(Lisbon)

Hartford

S. B. Mosley

March, 1837

120

Lebanon

Orrin Gilbert

March, 1837

30

(Goshen)

Mansfield

Dr. H. Skinner

300

Middle

30

Haddam

Middletown

S. W. Griswold

February, 1834

Middletown

Mrs. Clarissa Beman

(colored)

New Haven

J. E. P. Dean

June, 1833

(male)

New Haven

Mrs. Leicester Sawyer

January, 1837

50

(female)

Newstead

Daniel Trowbridge

48

Norwich

Alpheus Kingsley

(male)

Norwich

Miss F. M. Caulkins

(female)

Plainfield

C. C. Burleigh

August, 1835

94

(male)

Plainfield

43

(female)

Pomfret

South

Ezekiel Birdeye

January, 1837

40

Cornwall

APPENDIX 4

215

No. of

Mem-

Name

Secretary

Date

bers

South

Almond Ames

March, 1837

Killingly

Torringford

Dr. Erasmus Hudson

67

(male)

Torringford

36

(female)

Waterbury

S. S. Deforest

July, 1836

57

(male)

Waterbury

16

(female)

Warren

George P. Talmadge

May, 1836

27

West

J. R. Guild

Woodstock

Winchester

Noble J. Everett

12

Windham

Thomas Gray

March, 1836

(Willimantic)

Winsted

50

Wolcottville

January, 1837

40

Source : Fourth Annual Report, American Anti-Slavery Society
(1837).

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APPE

NDIX ^\

SLAVES IN CONNECTICUT, 183©

Number

I Hartford County

None None
II New Haven County

City of New Haven 4

Cheshire 1

Wallingford 4

III New London County

Groton 2

IV Fairjield County

Bridgeport 2

Wilton 1

New Canaan 1

Norwalk 2

Stamford 1

V Windham County

None None
VI Litchfield County

Goshen 1

Sharon 1

VII Middlesex County

Saybrook 2

VIII Tolland County

Columbia 1

TOTAL 23

Fifth Census of United States (Washington, 1832), 26-29.

NOTES

aSZ5HSE5aFESE5H5HSHSEnSHSZn5ESHSlSia5BSZHHSZ5H5HSHSZ5^i!Sa5HS

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York, 194-1), 87.

2. Cf. Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from
Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1898), 47 and passim. Under
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, the aiding of fugitive slaves
was a penal offense punishable by a fine of $500.

3. Henrietta Buckmaster, Let My People Go (New York, 1941),
59; Alexander Milton Ross, Recollections and Experiences of
an Abolitionist (Toronto, 1876), 2-3.

4. Siebert, op. cit., 33, 34, 68, 346-347.

5. Siebert, op. cit., 190-191.

6. Siebert, op. cit., 237, 340-342.

Chapter 1 blazing the trail

1. Bernard C. Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut (Johns
Hopkins University Studies, IX— X [Baltimore, 1893], 9;
Norris G. Osborn, History of Connecticut (New York,
1925), III, 318. Osborn states that the first record of a slave
in Connecticut dates from 1639.

2. Henry Morris, "Slavery in the Connecticut Valley" {Papers
and Proceedings of the Connecticut Valley Historical Society
[Springfield, 1881]), 208.

3. Lewis Sprague Mills, The Story of Connecticut (New York,
1953), 308; James E. Coley, "Slavery in Connecticut," Mag-
azine of American History, XXV (January— June 1891), 490.

4. Steiner, op. cit., 18.

5. J. E. A. Smith, The History of Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
1800-1876 (Springfield, 1876), 52; Morris, op. cit., 212-213.

6. Ibid., 215.

220 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

7. Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut (Johns Hopkins
University Studies, XI [Baltimore, 1893]), 450.

8. Microfilm letters on the Underground Railroad in Connect-
icut, collection of Professor Wilbur H. Siebert, Ohio State
University, 19. (This material is hereafter cited as "Letters,
U.G.R.R. Conn.")

9. Dwight L. Dumond, Antislavery : The Crusade for Freedom
in America (Ann Arbor, 1961), 17-19.

10. Frances M. Calkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (Hart-
ford, 1866), 520.

11. Steiner, op. cit., 55, 68-70.

12. New London Gazette, December 2, 1768.

13. Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New Eng-
land, 1620-1776 (New York, 1942), 146.

14. Steiner, op. cit., 19.

15. Greene, op. cit., 146.

16. F. C. Bissell, "The Reverend Samuel Peters of Hebron, Con-
necticut . , ." (typescript, Connecticut State Library, Hart-
ford).

17. This account of the adventures of James Mars is based on
his own book, Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in
Connecticut, Written by Himself (Hartford, 1865). Quota-
tions are from that source.

18. Adam C. White, The History of the Town of Litchfield, Con~
necticut, 1720-1920 (Litchfield, 1920), 153.

19. Martin H. Smith, "Old Slave Days in Connecticut," The
Connecticut Magazine, X (1906), 115ff. Quotations are from
that source.

20. Anon., "Slavery in Connecticut," Magazine of American His-
tory, XV (January— June, 1886), 614; Coley, op. cit., 492.

21. Iveagh H. Sterry and William Garrigus, They Found a Way :
Connecticut's Restless People (Brattleboro, Vt., 1938), 262-
263; Lillian E. Prudden, "A Paper ... at the Fortnightly
Club in New Haven, November 16, 1949" (typescript, Con-
necticut State Library), 11—12.

22. Dumond, op. cit., 47, 57; Steiner, op. cit., 69—70.

23. Ibid., 70.

24. Wilbur H. Siebert, Vermont's Anti-Slavery and Underground
Railroad Record (Columbus, 1937), 5.

25. Dumond, op. cit., 80-81, 93.

NOTES 221

26. Steiner., op. cit., 84 ; Jarvis Means Morse, A Neglected Period
of Connecticut's History, 1818-1850 (New Haven, 1933),
192.

27. Robert A. Warner, New Haven Negroes, A Social History
(New Haven, 1940), 42; Early L. Fox, The American Col-
onization Society, 1817—184-0 (Johns Hopkins University
Studies, XXXVII [Baltimore, 1919]), 29.

28. A. Doris Banks Henries, The Liberian Nation (New York,
1954), 15.

29. African Repository and Colonial Journal, V (May, 1829),
93 ; Warner, op. cit., 42.

30. Willbur Fisk, "Substance of an Address Delivered Before
the Middletown Colonization Society at the Annual Meeting,
July 4, 1835" (Middletown, 1835), 15; Fox, op. cit., 29-31;
Warner, op. cit., 48.

31. Leonard W. Bacon, Anti-Slavery Before Garrison (New
Haven, 1903), 9.

32. Lorenzo D. Turner, Antislavery Sentiment in American Lit-
erature Prior to 1865 (Washington, 1929), 33.

33. William Lloyd Garrison, quoted in Bacon, op. cit., 10.

Chapter 2 thorny is the pathway

1. William Lloyd Garrison, "A Salutation," The Liberator, Jan-
uary 1, 1831.

2. First Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the New
England Anti-Slavery Society . . . (Boston, 1833), 13—14;
W. Sherman Savage, "The Controversy over the Distribution
of Abolition Literature, 1830-1860" (Washington, 1938), 9.

3. Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Con-
flict (Boston, 1869).

4. Buckmaster, op. cit., 31 ; Dumond, op. cit., 64-69.

5. Fourth Annual Report, American Anti-Slavery Society (New
York, 1837).

6. Warner, op. cit.; William Jay, An Inquiry into the Character
and Tendency of the American Colonization and American
Anti-Slavery Societies (New York, 1835), 28-29; Mary H.
Mitchell, "Slavery in Connecticut and Especially in New
Haven," Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society
(New Haven, 1951), 309.

222 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

7. Ellen D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut
(Worcester, 1880), II, 490-494; Jay, op. cit., 30-39;
Dumond, op. cit., 211-217.

8. Morse, op. cit., 196.

9. "Resolutions on the Death of William L. Garrison (Adopted
by the Middletown Mental Impovement Society)," Middle-
town Constitution, June 3, 1879; cf. also Baldwin Collection,
Middlesex County Historical Society, Middletown, Conn.

10. Charles H. S. Davis, History of Wallingford, Connecticut
(Meriden, 1870), 503-504; Sanford H. Wendover, ed., 150
Years of Meriden (Meriden, 1956), 67; E. B. Bronson,
"Notes on Connecticut as a Slave State," Journal of Negro
History, II (January 1917), 80-81.

11. Charter Oak, Hartford, May 1839; Charlotte Case Fairley,
"A History of New Canaan, 1801—1901," Readings in New
Canaan History (New Canaan, 1949), 223.

12. Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County,
Connecticut (Chicago, 1903), 351 ; James M. Bailey, History
of Banbury, Connecticut (New York, 1896), 166-167; Clive
Day, "The Rise of Manufacturing in Connecticut," (Pam-
phlets of the Tercentenary Commission of the State of Con-
necticut [New Haven, 1935]), XLIV, 12-13.

13. Charter Oak, May, 1839.

14. Frances A. Breckenridge, Recollections of a New England
Town (Meriden, 1899), 168; Mary H. Mitchell, History of
New Haven County, Connecticut (Chicago— Boston, 1930),
I, 421.

15. Aella Greene, "The Underground Railroad and Those Who
Managed It," Springfield Daily Republican, March 25, 1900.

16. Fisk, op. cit., 15.

17. The African Repository, and Colonial Journal, XXIII
(March, 1847), 92. (Hereafter cited as African Repository.)

18. First Annual Report . . . New England Anti-Slavery So-
ciety, 37.

19. Louis R. Mehlinger, "The Attitude of the Free Negro
Toward African Colonization," The Journal of Negro His-
tory, I (1916), 286.

20. African Repository, XXVIII, 114-117.

21. General Assembly of Connecticut, The Public Statute Laws
of the State of Connecticut (Hartford, 1835), 15.

NOTES 223

22. May, op. cit., 297.

23. Dumond, op. cit., 249-256.

24. Charter Oak, May, 1839, 1 ; J. Eugene Smith, One Hundred
Years of Hartford's Courant (New Haven, 1949), 199.

25. Savage, op. cit., 13.

26. Theodore Weld, ed., American Slavery As It Is (New York,
1839), 77-82.

27. Savage, op. cit., 55.

28. Steiner, op. cit., 74-75.

29. Dumond, op. cit., 212.

30. Steiner, op. cit., 33—34.

31. Columbian Weekly Register, New Haven, June 23, 1838.

Chapter 3 fugitives in flight

1. This account of the adventures of William Grimes is based
on his autobiography, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway
Slave, Written by Himself, New Haven, 1855. Quotations
are from that source.

2. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times (Hartford, 1884), 252.

3. New Era Press, Deep River, Conn., November 23, 1900.

4. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 89.

5. Frank J. Mather, "An Address Delivered for the Benefit of
the Library Association" (Deep River, 1914), 10, 21.

6. Ibid., 20.

7. Mabel C. Holman, Old Saybrook Stories (Hartford, 1949),
II, 292.

8. This narrative is adapted from The Autobiography of James
Lindsey Smith, Norwich, Conn., 1881. Quotations are from
that source.

9. J. T. Norton in Freedom's Gift; or, Sentiments of the Free
(Hartford, 1840), 2-14.

10. C. Bancroft Gillespie and G. M. Curtiss, A Century of
Meriden (Meriden, 1906), 253.

11. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 122-123.

Chapter lp the captives of the amistad

1. The story of this affair is told in considerable detail in
Simeon E. Baldwin, "The Captives of the Amistad," in
Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, IV

224 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

(New Haven, 1888), 331-370 (hereafter referred to as
"Baldwin, Amistad"). The proceedings before the Supreme
Court, including a statement of the basic facts and the
decisions of the lower courts, are found in Stephen K. Wil-
liams, ed., Reports of Cases Argued and Decided in the
Supreme Court of the United States, Book X (Newark,
N. Y., 1883), 826-855 (hereafter referred to as "Supreme
Court Reports, X").

2. C. L. Norton, "Cinquez — the Black Prince," Farmington
Magazine, I, If., (February 1901), 3.

3. Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams,
Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 18J/.8, X
(Philadelphia, 1876), 360. (Hereafter referred to as "Adams,
Memoirs, X.")

4. Supreme Court Reports, X, 832-833.

5. Adams, Memoirs, X, 255.

6. Baldwin, Amistad, 332.

7. Ibid., 332.

8. Ibid., 333 ; Supreme Court Reports, X, 828.

9. Baldwin, Amistad, 333-334.

10. Ibid., 334-335; Supreme Court Reports, X, 827-828.

11. Baldwin, Amistad, 335—336; Supreme Court Reports, X,
828-829.

12. Adams, Memoirs, X, 131-132.

13. Baldwin, Amistad, 337-339.

14. Ibid., 338, 342; Supreme Court Reports, X, 828. Cf. R. Earl
McClendon, "The Amistad Claims: Inconsistencies of Pol-
icy," Political Science Quarterly, XLVII. 3 (March 1933),
387.

15. Baldwin, Amistad, 339, 340.

16. Ibid., 338, 341, 346-347; Liberator, June 12, 1840.

17. Baldwin, Amistad, 341.

18. Ibid., 344.

19. Adams, Memoirs, X, 182.

20. Baldwin, Amistad, 345, 348.

21. Ibid., 349.

22. Adams, Memoirs, X, 133-135.

23. Baldwin, Amistad, 346.

24. Supreme Court Reports, X, 829-833.

25. Baldwin, Amistad, 348.

26. Supreme Court Reports, X, 831.

NOTES 225

27. Ibid., 831.

28. Adams, Memoirs, X, 133 and passim.

29. Ibid., 358, 360.

30. The Emancipator, March 25, 1841, quoted in Baldwin, Amis-
tad, 354-355.

31. Adams, Memoirs, X, 399-401 ; Baldwin, Amistad, 355-356.

32. Adams, Memoirs, X, 429, 430.

33. Ibid., 431, 435. (Because Adams did not deliver a transcript
of his address to the reporter, Supreme Court Reports con-
tains not even a summary of his argument.)

34. Supreme Court Reports, X, 855.

35. Baldwin, Amistad, 361, 365-369.

36. Ibid., 362.

37. Ibid., 363—364; John Hooker, Some Reminiscences of a Long
Life (Hartford, 1899), 26.

38. Cf. Hooker, op. cit., passim; cf. also the account of the
fugitive Charles, in Chapter 3 above.

39. Norton, op. cit., 4; J. M. Brown, "The Mendi Indians Again,"
Farmington Magazine, II, 8 (July 1902), 18; anon., "Some
Worthies of the Last Generation," Farmington Magazine,
1,10 (August 1901), 3, 4.

40. Ibid., 3; Hooker, op. cit., 26; Quincy Blakely, "Farmington,
One of the Mother Towns of Connecticut" (Pamphlets of
the Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut,
XXXVIII [New Haven, 1935]), 27.

41. Ibid., 27-28; Norton, op. cit., 4.

42. Ibid., 2, 4, 5.

43. Ibid., 5; Julius Gay, "Farmington Local History — The
Canal" (Hartford, 1899), 17; Ellen S. Bartlett, "The Amis-
tad Captives," New England Magazine, New Series, XXII
(March- August, 1900), 87.

44. Brown, op. cit., 18.

45. Baldwin, Amistad, 364; Hooker, op. cit., 26.

46. Baldwin, Amistad, 368 ; Warner, op. cit., 66-67, 68 ; Blakely,
op. cit., 27-28.

Chapter 5 a house divided

1. Freedom's Gift, 56.

2. William Goodell, Slavery and Antislavery (New York, 1855),
174.

226 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

3. Ibid., 174-175.

4. J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction (New
York, 1953), 106.

5. Madeleine Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery
Controversy (New York, 1944), 113—114.

6. Cf. Dumond, op. cit., 197-203, 290-304.

7. J. H. Trumbull, Memorial History of Hartford County, II
(Boston, 1886), 37; Carrol J. Noonan, Nativism in Connect-
icut (Washington, 1938), 138.

8. Steiner, op. cit., 35.

9. Randall, op. cit., 100.

10. Osborn, op. cit., II, 61 ; Charter Oak, December 30, 1847.

11. Thomas P. Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits
(New York, 1860), 110-111, 121.

12. Hooker, op. cit., 342.

13. Grace P. Fuller, An Introduction to the History of Connect-
icut as a Manufacturing State (Smith College Studies in His-
tory, I [Northampton, 1915]), 42.

14. Reminiscences of Austin P. Dunham (Hartford, n.d.), 35.

15. Walter Hard, The Connecticut (New York, 1947), 226.

16. Aella Greene, op. cit., March 25, 1900.

17. Lewis Ford, in The Liberator, March 26, 1852; Alice Stone
Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights (Boston,
1930), 80.

18. Parker Pillsbury, in The Liberator, March 26, 1852.

19. Smith, op. cit., 62-64.

20. T. M. D. Ward, A Memento of the Memory of Departed
Worth (New Bedford, 1854), 22. "Proceedings of the Con-
necticut State Convention of Colored Men Held at New
Haven on September 12th and 13th, 1849," Yale Slavery
Pamphlets, 52 (New Haven, 1849), 5-6.

21. Middlesex Republican, March 12, 1857.

Chapter 6 "this pretended law we cannot obey"

1. Congressional Globe. Thirty-First Congress, First Session
(Washington, 1850), Appendix, 1601-1603; George W. Per-
kins, "Minority Report of a Committee of the General Asso-
ciation" (presented at Salisbury, June 1849), Yale Slavery
Pamphlets, 2 (New Haven, 1849), 9.

NOTES 227

2. Siebert, Underground Railroad, 309—312; Randall, op. cit.,
168; Dumond, op. cit., 307-308.

3. John W. Burgess, The Middle Period, 1817-1858 (New
York, 1904), 82-107, 291-294, 305; J. H. Smith, "The
Mexican Recognition of Texas," American Historical Review,
XVI (October 1910), 38.

4. Cf. John D. Hicks, A Short History of American Democracy
(New York, 1949), 313.

5. Ibid., 320.

6. Siebert, op. cit., 23-24; Dumond, op. cit., 308-309; Allen
Johnson, "Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Acts,"
Yale Slavery Pamphlets, (New Haven, 1850), 166-167.

7. Burgess, op. cit., 366.

8. Ibid., 378-379.

9. Steiner, op. cit., 35; Hicks, op. cit., 218; Beman Collec-
tion (Yale University Library), 18. "The Proceeding of
the Union Meeting Held at Brewster's Hall, October 24,
1850," Yale Slavery Pamphlets, 52 (New Haven, 1851),
3-13.

10. Middletown Constitution, November 27, 1850.

11. J. Robert Lane, A Political History of Connecticut During
the Civil War (Washington, 1941), 13.

12. Hartford Courant, October 19, 1850.

13. New Haven Palladium, October 26, 1850.

14. Quoted in ibid., October 31, 1850.

15. Loc. cit.

16. New Haven Daily Register, November 16, 1850.

17. Palladium, November 6, 1850.

18. Norwich Aurora, October 9, 1850.

19. Elizabeth Curtis, Letters and Journals (Hartford, 1926),
224.

20. T. M. D. Ward, op. cit., 20-21.

21. Middletown Sentinel and Witness, October 12, 1850.

22. George W. Perkins, "Conscience and the Constitution," Yale
Slavery Pamphlets, 2, 8-9, 20-21.

23. Middletown Sentinel and Witness, October 29, 1850.

24. Zion Herald and Wesleyan Journal, December 11, 1850.

25. Middletown Sentinel and Witness, loc. cit.

26. Steiner, op. cit., 35.

27. "Resolutions on Slavery," Legislation of Connecticut (House

228 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

Miscellaneous Documents No. 1, Thirty-first Congress, Sec-
ond Session, I [Washington, 1850]).

28. Steiner, op. cit., 36-37.

29. Dumond, op. cit., 309.

30. Fred Landon, "The Negro Migration to Canada After the
Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act," Journal of Negro His-
tory, V (January 1920), 22.

31. The Liberator, October 18, 1850.

32. African Repository, XXVII, ^ (April 1852), 117.

33. "Negro Population, 1790-1915," (Department of Commerce,
Bureau of the Census [Washington, 1918]), 63.

34. Middletown Constitution, October 9, 1850.

35. Deep River New Era Press, November 23, 1900.

36. James Lindsey Smith, op. cit., 90—91.

37. Siebert, op. cit., 193-194.

Chapter 7 new haven, gateway from the sea

1. Aella Greene, op. cit., March 11, 1900; cf. Chapter 2.

2. Imprisonment of Coloured Seamen under the Law of South
Carolina (British and Foreign Antislavery Society, 1854
[ ?]), Yale Slavery Pamphlets, LXXIV, 3.

3. Secretary of State, State of Connecticut, Register and Man-
ual (Hartford, 1960), 316-317.

4. Warner, op. cit., 20—26.

5. Ibid., 25.

6. Ibid., 97; African Improvement Society of New Haven,
Annual Report, III (1829), 11.

7. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 1.

8. Foster W. Rice, "The Life of Nathaniel Jocelyn, 1796-1881"
(publications of the Connecticut Historical Society, IV
[Hartford, 1850-1881]), 219; Beman Collection, 20.

9. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 95.

10. Samuel W. S. Dutton, An Address at the Funeral of Hon.
Roger Sherman Baldwin . . . (New Haven, 1863), 8—10.

11. Amos Beman to W. S. Ward, January 13, 1851, Beman Col-
lection, 3, 18.

12. The Voice of the Fugitive, May 18, 1851, Beman Collec-
tion, 19.

18. Ibid., November 30, 1852, Beman Collection, 106.

NOTES 229

14. Mary H. Mitchell, op. cit., 308.

15. Aella Greene, op. cit., April 1, 1900,

1(5, M. L. Beckwith Ewell, One True Heart — Leaves from the
Life of George Beckwith (New Haven, 1880), 24-25.

17. Bernard Steiner, A History of the Plantation of Menunka-
tuck and of the Original Town of Guilford, Connecticut
(Baltimore, 1879), 286.

18. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 95.

19. Southington News, September 7, 1951.

20. Aella Greene, loc. cit.

21. Ibid., loc. cit.

22. Ibid., loc. cit.

23. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 101; Mrs. Alfred H. Terry to
H.T.S., March 25, 1957.

24. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 67.

25. A Memorial — Mrs. Minerva Lee Hart (New Britain, 1885),
16-17.

26. Lillian H. Tryon, The Story of New Britain, Connecticut
(Hartford, 1925), 72.

27. Middletown Constitution, November 11, 1857.

Chapter 8 west Connecticut trunk lines

1. Aella Greene, op. cit., March 11, 1900; Charles W. Chesnutt,
Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1899), 77-78.

2. Beman Collection, 73.

3. Mrs. C. A. B. Ray, Sketch of the Life of Rev. Charles B.
Ray (New York, 1887), 33; Siebert, Underground Railroad,
35.

4. Ray, op. cit., 46; Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 41 ; Aella Greene,
Reminiscent Sketches (Florence, Mass., 1902), 159—160.

5. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., loc. cit.

6. Federal Writers' Project, Connecticut (American Guides
Series [Boston, 1938]), 449; Mrs. Stowell Rounds to H.T.S.,
April 13, 1960.

7. Fairley, op. cit., 223; Commemorative Biographical Record
of Middlesex County, Connecticut (Chicago, 1903), 351;
Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 35, 96; David Van Hoosear, quoted
in Mrs. Stowell Rounds to H.T.S., April 13, 1960.

8. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 22, 77; Mitchell, op. cit., 423.

230 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

9. Cf. Eber M. Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Under-
ground Railroad (New York, 1879), 34.

10. Charlotte B. Bennett, "Glimpses of Old New Milford His-
tory," Two Centuries of New Milford, Connecticut (New
York, 1907), 20.

11. Osborn, op. cit., 195—196; "Washington," The Highways and
Byways of Connecticut (Hartford, 1947), Episode 102;
Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Women's
Rights (Boston, 1930), 32-33.

12. Louis A. Coolidge, An Old-F ashioned Senator, Orville H.
Piatt of Connecticut (New York, 1910), 5.

13. Samuel Orcutt, History of Torrington, Connecticut (Albany,
1878), 215.

14. Hartford Times, Story of Connecticut, 1815-1935 (Hart-
ford, 1936), 90.

15. Hartford Courant, February 6, 1962.

16. John Boyd, Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Con-
necticut (Hartford, 1871), 461.

17. The Liberator, March 26, 1852.

18. Mrs. Mabel A. Newell to H.T.S., April 8, 1960.

19. Theron W. Crissey, History of Norfolk, Litchfield County
(Everett, Mass., 1900), 299.

20. Chard Powers Smith, The Housatonic, Puritan River (New
York, 1946), 307. Cf. Siebert, The Underground Railroad
in Massachusetts (Worcester, 1936), 4; cf. also Siebert,
Vermont's Anti-Slavery and Underground Railroad Record,
67-89.

Chapter 9 east Connecticut locals

1. Irving H. Bartlett, From Slave to Citizen. The Story of the
Negro in Rhode Island (Providence, 1954), 9, 18, 21, 45.

2. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, "Anti-Slavery Reminiscences"
(pamphlet, Central Falls, R. I., 1891), 27-28.

3. Mary Agnes Best, The Town that Saved a State, Westerly
(Westerly, R. I., 1943), 233.

4. Mrs. Harold S. Burr to H. T. S., July 4, 1958.

5. Mrs. Lillian L. Clarke to H. T. S., December 1958 (inter-
view).

6. "Narrative of Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins of Waterford, Con-
necticut," Theodore Weld, comp., American Slavery As It Is

NOTES 231

(New York, 1839), 11-17 (see Appendix). Cf. Dumond, op.
cit., 249-256.

7. The Slave's Cry, December 23, 1844.

8. Federal Writers' Project, op. cit., 264.

9. Siebert, The Underground Railroad in Massachusetts, 11;
Norwich Aurora, November 6, 1850.

10. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 139.

11. Oliver Johnson, William L. Garrison (Boston, 1881), 128.

12. Proceedings of the New England Anti-Slavery Convention,
Held in Boston on the 27th, 28th and 29th of May, 1834
(Boston, 1834), 24.

13. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 109, 113; Siebert. op. cit., 11.

14. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 113, 131, 139.

15. Cf. Chapter 2, note 22.

16. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 143.

17. Federal Writers' Project, op. cit., 535.

18. Liberator, April 4, 1851, and August 5, 1853.

19. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of
Theodore Weld and Sarah Grimhe, 1822-1844 (New York,
1934), 523-524.

20. Secretary of State, State of Connecticut, Register and Manual
(Hartford, 1960), 316.

21. Federal Writers' Project, op. cit., 390.

Chapter 10 valley line to hartford

1. "Old Lyme," Highways and Byways, Episode 79.

2. For details of Baldwin's activities, see Chapter 11.

3. Mrs. Harold S. Burr to H. T. S., July 4, 1958.

4. Story of Connecticut, 90.

5. Cedric L. Robinson to H. T. S., April 1, 1960; Mrs. Alice
Weaver to H. T. S., February 10, 1962 (interview) ; Moodus,
Conn., Connecticut Valley Advertiser, Supplement, Septem-
ber 21, 1900.

6. The Old Chimney StacJcs in East Haddam (New York,
1887), 97-98.

7. Liberator, October 18, 1850; Connecticut Valley Advertiser,
loc. cit. Among the ships built by the Goodspeeds were the
schooners Sidney C. Jones and Commodore, in 1846; the
schooner Telegraph, in 1847; and the ship Hero, in 1847.

232 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

8. Hannah H. Smith, "Diary, June-December, 1849" (Con-
necticut State Library), 80.

9. Siebert, Underground Railroad, 129.

10. Beaufort R. L. Newsom to H. T. S., March 30, 1960; cf.
Chapters 3, 5, and 7.

11. See Chapter 11.

12. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 99, 101.

13. History of Middlesex County, Connecticut, with Biographical
Sketches of Its Prominent Men (New York, 1884), 357.

14. Henry Sill Baldwin and Mrs. Charles Perkins to H. T. S.,
April 3-16, 1957.

15. Baldwin, Amistad, 340.

16. Hooker, op. cit., passim.

17. Trumbull, op. cit., 37; cf. Speech of Mr. Gillette in the
Senate of the United States, February 23, 1855 (Washing-
ton, 1855).

18. Trumbull, loc. cit.

19. Hooker, op. cit., 171.

20. Ibid., loc. cit

21. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 64-65.

22. Liberator, October 18, 1850; cf. Chapter 3.

23. Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut, 15—16.

24. James W. C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith or Events
in the History of J. TV. C. Pennington (London, 1849),
passim.

25. Pennington, op. cit., passim; Hooker, op. cit., 38—39.

26. Except as otherwise noted, this account of Pennington's
manumission follows that given in Hooker, op. cit., 37—41.

27. Zion Herald and Wesley an Journal, October 23, 1850.

Chapter 11 middle-town, a way station

1. Connecticut Census, 1850 (Connecticut State Library), 214.

2. L. J. Greene, op. cit., 33—34.

3. Ibid., 92; Centennial of Middletown, 1886-1936 (Middle-
town, 1936), 308-309.

4. L. J. Greene, op. cit., 48.

5. Ibid., loc. cit.

6. Ibid., 55.

7. Freedom's Gift, 58-60.

NOTES 233

8. Resolutions on the Death of William Lloyd Garrison; Middle-
sex County Gazette, quoted in The Liberator, July 30, 1831.

9. Willbur Fisk, op. cit., 15, 23.

10. Fifth Census of the United States (Washington, 1832),
28-29.

11. Louis R. Mehlinger, op. cit., 286.

12. History of Middlesex, 143-144; Middletown Constitution,
June 3, 1879; "Documents," Journal of Negro History, X
(July 1925), 521.

13. Charles H. Wesley, "The Negro in the Organization of
Abolition," Phylon, the Atlanta University Review of Race
and Culture, XI (1941), 229.

14. "Thoughts on Colonization," William Lloyd Garrison, 1805—
1879; The Story of His Life Told by His Children (Boston,
1885-1889), I, 340-341.

15. Carl F. Price, Wesleyan's First Century (Middletown, 1932),
50.

16. Beman Collection, 87.

17. Price, loc. cit.

18. History of Middlesex, 161 ; Hartford Courant, April 6, 1887.

19. Ibid., loc. cit.

20. Resolutions on the Death of William Lloyd Garrison.

21. Baldwin Collection.

22. Willbur Fisk to the Reverend Ignatius Few, August 1838,
"Letters of Willbur Fisk," Olin Library, Wesleyan Uni-
versity.

23. Baldwin Collection.

24. Ibid.

25. Henry Sill Baldwin and Mrs. Charles Perkins to H. T. S.,
April 3-16, 1957; Benjamin L. Douglas to H. T. S., Novem-
ber 8, 1961.

26. Official records, Health Department, City of Middletown;
Dictionary of American Biography, (New York, 1889), VI,
614.

27. George Thompson, Prison Life and Reflections or a Narrative
of the Arrest, Trial, Conviction . . . (Oberlin, 1847), 1;
Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America
(Boston, 1876), II, 69-73; Siebert, Underground Railroad,
155-156.

28. Thompson, op. cit., 27.

234 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

29. Wilson, op. cit., 72; Siebert, op. cit., 156.

30. Charter Oak, June 8, 1846.

31. History of Middlesex, 163-164.

32. Ibid., loc. cit.; Resolutions on the Death of William Lloyd
Garrison; Benjamin L. Douglas to H. T. S., November 8,
1961.

33. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 35.

Chapter 12 farmington, the grand central station

1. Julius Gay, "Schools and Schoolmasters in Farmington in
the Olden Time" (pamphlet, Hartford, 1892), 21.

2. Mabel S. Hurlburt, Farmington Town Clerks and Their
Times, 164.5-1940 (Hartford, 1945), 192.

3. Connecticut Census, 1790, 1800, and 1820 {Hartford County),
Connecticut State Library, Hartford.

4. Julius Gay, "Farmington Local History — the Canal" (pam-
phlet, Hartford, 1899), passim.

5. "Farmington and its Child Plainville," Farmington Tercen-
tenary Celebration, 1640—1940 (Farmington, 1940), 53—54.

6. Hurlburt, op. cit., 192.

7. Hooker, op. cit., 22.

8. Ibid., loc. cit.

9. Ibid., 339-341.

10. Ibid., 22-23, 339, 342.

11. Cf. Chapters 4, 10.

12. Blakely, op. cit., 28.

13. Cf. Chapter 3.

14. C. L. Norton, op. cit., 5.

15. Eleanor H. Johnson, "Farmington and the Underground Rail-
way," Farmington Magazine, I, 11 (September 1901), 6-7.

16. Hooker, op. cit., 339-340; Florence S. M. Crofut, Guide to
the History and Historic Sites of Connecticut (New Haven,
1937), 207.

17. Johnson, op. cit., 6.

18. Hooker, op. cit., 340.

1 9. Ibid., loc. cit.

20. Johnson, op. cit., 7.

21. Ibid., loc. cit.

22. Ibid., 6-7.

NOTES 235

23. Letters, U.G.R.R. Conn., 51, 64.

24. Aella Greene, op. cit., April 1, 1900.

25. Morris, op. cit., 215; Mason A. Green, Springfield 1636-
1886, History of Town and City . . . (Springfield, 1888),
506.

26. Siebert, Underground Railroad, 73—75.

27. Aella Greene, op. cit., August 12, 1900.

28. Joseph Marsh, "The Underground Railway," The History
of Florence, Massachusetts (Florence, 1895), 165—167.

29. Siebert, Vermont's Anti-Slavery and Underground Railroad
Record, 90-102.

Chapter 13 the road in full, swing

1. Hicks, op. cit., 204-205; Randall, op. cit., 126-127.

2. Ibid., 128—135; Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele
Commager, The Growth of the American Republic (New
York, 1930), 491-494.

3. Ralph Volney Harlow, "The Rise and Fall of the Kansas
Aid Movement," American Historical Review, XLI (October
1935), 1-7.

4. Mitchell, op. cit., 310-311.

5. Randall, loc. cit.; Lane, op. cit., 39—41, 43.

6. Randall, op. cit., 148—156; Hartford C our ant, March 14,
1857. For a detailed account of the case, see Vincent C. Hop-
kins, Dred Scott's Case, New York, 1951.

7. James Mars, op. cit., 34—36; Helen T. Catterall, "Judi-
cial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro,"
Cases from the Courts of New England, the Middle States,
and the District of Columbia, IV (Washington, 1936), 433-
436.

8. Public Acts, Passed by the General Assembly of the State
of Connecticut, May Session, 1857 (Hartford, 1857), 12;
Hartford Courant, June 13, 1857.

9. Middlesex Republican, March 12, 1857.

10. Middletown Constitution, March 18, 1857.

11. Hurlburt, op. cit., 192.

12. New Haven Journal Courier, May 9, 1911; Edward E.
Atwater, History of the City of New Haven (New York,
1887), 251-252.

236 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

13. "The Fugitive Slave Law and its Victims" (Antislavery
Tracts, No. 15 [New York, 1861]), 45-46.

14. Best, op. cit., 232.

15. Charles P. Bush, "The Fugitive Slave Law (A Sermon
Preached in the Fourth Congregational Church, Norwich,
Connecticut)" (Norwich, 1854), 1-4.

16. Leverett Griggs, "Fugitives from Slavery (A Discourse
Delivered in Bristol, Connecticut, on Fast Day)" (Hartford,
1857), 3.

17. R. P. Stanton, "Slavery Viewed in the Light of the Golden
Rule (A Discourse Delivered in the Fourth Congregational
Church, Norwich, Connecticut)" (Norwich, 1860), 9-10.

18. Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, May 1,
1859 (New York, 1860), 85.

19. Middlesex Republican, March 12, 1857.

20. New Haven Columbian Weekly Register, August 20, 1862.

21. Atwater, op. cit., 251-252; Lane, op. cit., 256; Resolutions
on the Death of William Lloyd Garrison.

22. Bruce Catton, America Goes to War (Middletown, 1958),
23-25 ; Dumond, op. cit., 370-372.

23. Ibid., loc. cit.

24. Ibid., loc. cit.; Catton, op. cit., 25—27; Lane, op. cit., 210.

25. Hartford Courant, September 24, 1862.

26. Waterbury American, September 26, 1862.

27. Middletown Sentinel and Witness, April 30, 1862.

28. Norwich Aurora, January 3, 1863.

29. New Haven Columbian Weekly Register, August 20, 1862.

30. James Lindsey Smith, op. cit., 82.

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242 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

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244 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

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246 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

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Vermont's Anti-Slavery and Underground Railroad

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248 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

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250 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

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INDEX

ESZSZ5HHZ5Z5HSZ5Z5HSESHFa5ESZEE52SHSHSE5HSEErH5H5EFaSB5HSEnSE5

INDEX

Abda (fugitive), 11

Adams, John Quincy, 69, 72—

76, 81
Adams, Robert, 129
Africa, 12, 22, 23, 38, 66, 67,

73, 75, 77, 81, 82, 103, 153
Africanus, Selah Mills, 90-91,

100

Akins, , 17

Albany, N.Y., 8, 84
Alexander, Prosper, 135
Amistad, 64, 65-81, 82, 110,

111, 142, 166, 167
Anderson, George, 170
Andover, Conn., 136, 140
Andrews, Alfred, 118

Andrews, Reverend , 83

Antonio, 65, 67, 69, 77
Arizona, 94
Arnold, Benjamin, 151
Augur, Phineas M., 141
Avon, Conn., 171

Bacon, Reverend Leonard, 178
Bailey, Alfred, 140
Bailey, Russell, 140
Baldwin, Henry Sill, 159
Baldwin, Jesse G., 98, 137,

140, 141, 156-159, 162
Baldwin, Roger S., 69, 73, 74,

76,81, 90, 111

Baldwin, Judge Simeon, 21

Baltimore, Md., 49

Banna, 65, 69

Bannister, John, 150—151

Barbados, 150

Barbour, Justice Philip P., 76

Bartlett, , 116

Beckwith, George, 113-114
Beecher, Henry Ward, 142,

177, 178
Beman, Amos G., 111-113,

119-120, 154-155
Beman, Clarissa, 154
Beman, Jehiel C, 38, 91, 139,

140, 153-154
Benezet, Anthony, 12
Bennington, Vt., 127
Benson, George, 134
Bermuda, 43
Betty (fugitive), 19
Bibb, Henry, 92
Billings, Elijah, 21

Bingham, , 18

Birney, James G., 84
Blakeslee, Joel, 122
Bloomfleld, Conn., 84, 142, 143,

171
Booth, Henry, 118
Borden, Nathaniel B., 129
Boston, Mass., 3, 8, 25, 26, 32,

43,98, 108, 135, 150

254

INDEX

Bourne, George, 22
Branagan, Thomas, 22

Brandegee, Judge , 183

Brattleboro, Vt., 173
Breckenridge, Frances, 36
Bristol, Conn., 182
Brooklyn, Conn., 20, 33, 63,

134
Brooklyn, N.Y., 177
Brown, John (abolitionist), 35,

124, 172-173, 176
Brown, John (of Williman-

tic), 134
Buchanan, President James,

178
Buffum, Arnold, 31
Bull, Joseph C, 172
Bull, William, 122

Bunnell, Father , 157

Burgess, Reverend Ebenezer,

23
Burleigh, William H., 85, 142
Burlington, Vt., 127
Burr, James E., 160, 161
Bush, Reverend Charles P., 182

Butler, , 16

Butler, General Benjamin, 185

Cady, , 16

Cady, Wesley, 132-133

Cady,W. W., 133

Caesar, Clarissa, 46—47

Calhoun, John C, 4

California, 94

Canaan, Conn., 15, 16, 17

Canada, 8, 9, 37, 63, 103, 109-
110, 113, 122, 123, 129, 134,
136, 144, 147, 170, 173

Canterbury, Conn., 30-34, 132,
133, 134

Cape Cod, 129

Capron, Effingham L., 39

Carr, , 45

Caulkins, Miss F. M., 131
Caulkins, Nehemiah, 130-131,

191-209
Central Village, Conn., 132-

133

Chamberlain, , 79

Chapman, Maria W., 82
Chapman's Landing, Conn.,

139
Charles (fugitive), 59-61, 138,

144, 167
Charleston, S.C., 40
Chesapeake Bay, 53
Chester, Conn., 51, 52, 114,

140

Church, , 172

Cinque (Cinquez), 65, 66, 67,

68, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79, 81,

110, 166
Clark, Charles B., 158
Clay, Henry, 94, 175

Clay, Judge , 45

Clemens, Samuel L., 143

Cleveland, Aaron, 13

Coe, Jonathan, 125

Coffin, Levi, 7

Colchester, Conn., 14, 153

Colebrook, Conn., 126

Collins, A. M., 100

Colt, Elisha, 144, 145

Colver, Reverend Nathaniel,

36, 121
Conant, J. A., 134
Cone River, 53
Connecticut River, 86, 107,

130, 138, 161
Cornish, Reverend S. E., 28

INDEX

255

Covey, James, 69, 72

Cowles, Horace, 167

Cowles, Thomas, 165

Cox, Henry, 48

Crandall, Prudence, 30-34, 40,

65, 133
Cuba, 65, 66, 69, 72, 76, 77
Curtis, Holbrook, 100
Curtiss, Carlos, 115, 116
Curtiss, Homer, 62-63, 117

Daggett, Judge David, 34
Danbury, Conn., 35—36
Danielson, Conn., 134—135
Darien, Conn., 121
Daskam, Benjamin, 120—121
Davids, Tice, 5
Day, George E., 78
Dayville, Conn., 181
Deep River, Conn., 51-52, 103,

108, 114, 140
Delaware, 119
Delaware River, 50
Deming, Samuel, 78, 167
Dennison, Reverend D., 157
Detroit, Mich., 112, 135
Dew, Professor Thomas, 4
Dickinson, James T., 140-141
Dixon, Ephraim, 162
Dole, Samuel P., 154-155, 157
Dorchester, Anthony, 11
Douglas, Benjamin, 140, 158,

161-162
Douglas, Stephen A., 175-176
Douglas, William, 161
Douglass, Frederick, 8
Dunbar, Ferrand, 122
Dunning, Levi, 167
Durham, Conn., 140
Dutton, Reverend , 114

Dutton, Reverend Samuel
W. S., 110, 177, 181

East Bridgewater, Conn., 88

East Haddam, Conn., 14, 138-
139

East Haddam Landing, Conn.,
138

East Hampton, Conn., 14

East River, 120

Eaton, Judge Joseph, 33

Edwards, Jonathan, Jr. 22

Eldridge (fugitive), 62-63, 117

Ellsworth, W. W., 34

Enfield Falls, 19

England (see also Great Brit-
ain), 148

Erie Canal, 164

Everett, Noble J., 125

Fairfield County, Conn., 184
Fall River, Mass., 129
Farmington, Conn., 60-61, 65—

66, 78-80, 114, 115, 118,

136, 141, 144, 147, 148, 159,

162, 163-172, 181
Farmington Canal, 164
Farmington River, 164, 171
Ferrer, Ramon, 65, 67
Fisher, Daniel, see Winters,

Billy
Fisk, Willbur, 37, 153, 158
Fitchburg, Mass., 173
Foone, see Grabbo

Foot, , 17

Forbes, Amelia A., 159

Foster, , 57-58, 144

Fox, Henry Stephen, 76
Fox, Joel, 134
Freeman, Frank, 163

256

INDEX

Fremont, John Charles, 178,

186
Frenchtown, Md., 53
Frisbie, Martin, 115-116

Gabriel, Phineas, 171

Gardiner, Ira, 158

Garrison, William Lloyd, 3, 4,

25-26, 39, 83-84, 118, 154,

157, 165
Gedney, Thomas R., 65, 68-69,

73-74, 77
Georgia, 87, 158, 179
Germany, 112, 147-148
Gibbs, Josiah W., 69
Gilbert, Joseph, 38
Gillette, Francis, 84, 142, 143,

144, 171
Gillette, William, 143
Gilpin, Henry D., 76
Glastonbury, Conn., 21, 139-

140

Goodrich, , 166

Goodspeed, George E., 138-

139
Goodspeed, William H., 138-

139
Grabbo (Graubo, Grabeau),

65, 66, 71, 73, 79, 167
Granby, Conn., 171
Gray, Hannah, 109
Great Britain (see also Eng-
land, Scotland), 76, 147
Great Lakes, 8
Green, Harry, 68
Green, James, 138
Greenwich, Conn., 20, 45, 120,

173
Griffin, Ebenezer, 134
Griffing, Mrs. , 51

Griggs, Reverend Leverett, 182
Grimes, William, 43-48, 59,

107, 108, 109, 120
Grimke, Angelina, 135-136
Guilford, Conn., 101, 114
Gunn, Frederick W., 123-124
Gunnery, The, 124

Haddam, Conn., 140
Hagerstown, Md., 147
Hall, Reverend E., 83
Hammond, Ann Eliza, 32
Hampden County, Mass., 12
Hampton, Conn., 63, 132, 134

Hanchet, , 18-20

Hanover, Conn., 132, 133-134

Hardy, Mrs. , 170

Harper's Ferry, Va., 172
Harrington, Judge Theophilus,

22
Harris, Sarah, 30—31
Hart, George, 118
Hart, Mrs. Minerva Lee, 118
Hartford, Conn., 11, 14, 20,
24, 35, 37-38, 39, 40, 57-
58, 60-61, 64, 78, 85, 86-87,
90, 97, 100, 103, 111, 117,
120, 130, 136, 137, 139, 140,
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146,
148, 151-152, 155, 159, 164,
166, 168, 170, 172, 177, 179,
185
Hartford County, Conn., 184
Havana, Cuba, 66, 67, 72, 73,

74, 75
Hawley, Joseph R., 143
Hayes, Luke, 163
Hebron, Conn., 14
Heidelberg, University of, 64,
147-148

INDEX

257

Henry (fugitive), 169
Higgins, Gideon, 138-139

Holabird, , 142

Hooker, John, 142, 143, 147,

148, 164-165, 167, 177
Hooker, Reverend Thomas, 148
Hopper, Isaac T., 6
Hotchkiss, Milo, 118
Housatonic River, 127
Howland, John, 172
Hubbard, Elijah, 157

Hudson, Dr. , 88-90

Hudson River, 120, 123
Hull, Hiram, 171-172
Hull, Liverus, 171
Hunt, Edwin, 157
Hurlburt, George, 167, 169,

170
Hurlburt, Lyman, 167

Illinois, 96, 175, 179

Indiana, 96

Iowa, 96

Ireland, 112

Isbell, Harlowe, 62, 117

Jack (fugitive), 10-11
Jackson, President Andrew, 27
Jackson, Nancy, 179
James (fugitive), 20
Jefferson, President Thomas,

12
Jeffrey, George W., 153
Jocelyn, Nathaniel, 71, 72, 110
Jocelyn, Reverend Simeon S.,

26-27, 28, 30, 34, 69, 71, 110
John (fugitive), 131
Jones (fugitive), 62-63, 117
Judson, Andrew T., 31, 33, 65,

68-69, 70, 71-72, 73

Ka-le, 74-76

Kansas, 8, 172, 176, 177, 180

Kelly, Abby, 87-88, 123-124,

166
Kensington, Conn., 118, 141
Kentucky, 94, 96, 1 1 1
Killingly, Conn., 134, 135
Killingworth, Conn., 51
Kingsley, Alpheus, 131
Kingston, Ont., 120

Lackey, , 105

Lambert, David, 121
Lanson, Abel, 45
Leavitt, Reverend Joshua, 69
Lebanon, Conn., 132, 134
Lee, Samuel, 133—134
Lee, William, 133

Lewis, , 157

Lewis, Elijah, 167, 169, 170,

171
Lewis, J. A., 134
Lewis, Thomas, 163
Lewis, William, 21
Liberia, 23, 38, 103
Lincoln, President Abraham,

104, 186-187
Lines, Charles, 177
Lisbon, Conn., see Hanover,

Conn.
Litchfield, Conn., 18, 46-47
Lize (fugitive), 19
London (fugitive), 20
London, England, 147
Long Island, 68, 120, 145-146
Long Island Sound, 86, 107,

113, 120, 130, 137
Loomis, Eldad, 19
Lorenzo (fugitive), 53, 55
Loring, Ellis Gray, 74

258

INDEX

Louisiana Territory, 176
Ludlow, Reverend Henry, 35,

111
Lyman, David, 140
Lyman, William, 102, 140, 141
Lyme, Conn., 38

Madden, Richard R., 72-73

Madison, Conn., 140

Madrid, Spain, 72

Maine, 87

Manhattan Island, 120, 138

Mansfield, Conn., 136

Margroo, 81

Mars, James, 15-18, 126, 179

Mars, Joseph, 16, 17-18

Maryland, 18, 19, 20, 53, 96,

119, 135, 145, 148
Massachusetts, 10, 11, 12, 16,

19, 23, 85, 94, 104, 116, 120,

127, 129, 132, 134, 135, 136,

168, 171, 172, 176, 177, 184
May, Reverend Samuel J., 8,

26-27, 31, 39, 63, 134
McAlpine, Silas H., 125
McKee, William, 167
McLeod, Alexander, 22
Meriden, Conn., 35, 36, 62-63,

85, 101, 115, 116, 117-118,

141, 156
Mexico, 94, 112
Middlefield, Conn., 102, 106,

140-141
Middlesex County, Conn., 138
Middletown, Conn., 24, 35, 37,

38, 86, 91, 101, 103-104,

122, 137, 140, 141, 150-162,

187
Mills, Reverend Samuel J., 23
Minnesota, 178

Mississippi, 160
Mississippi River, 159
Missouri, 96, 159, 160, 176
Missouri River, 103
Mitchell, William, 158
Montauk Point, 68, 74
Montez, Pedro, 66, 67, 69, 72
Montpelier, Vt., 17-3
Montreal, P.Q., 120
Morgan, Huldah, 154
Morocco, 12

Munger, , 1 8

Mystic, Conn., 87
Mystic River, 183

Naugatuck, Conn., 87

Nebraska, 176, 177

Ned (slave), 19

New Bedford, Mass., 104, 129,
131

New Britain, Conn., 118, 141

New Canaan, Conn., 35

New Castle, Pa., 53, 55

New England, 4, 8, 10, 126,
153, 177, 184

New Hampshire, 137

New Haven, Conn., 10, 14, 26,
28-30, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 45,
46, 51, 64, 65, 69, 70-71, 74,
78, 90-92, 96, 97-99, 107-
118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 137,
140, 141, 146, 155, 164, 166,
168, 173, 177, 178, 181, 185,
187

New Haven County, Conn., 184

New London, Conn., 14, 39,
46, 68, 101-102, 130, 131,
137, 138, 150, 183

New London County, Conn.,
132

INDEX

259

New Marlboro, Mass., 127

New Mexico, 94-95

New Milford, Conn., 123

New Orleans, La., 175

New Plymouth (colony), 10

Newport, R.I., 128, 150

New York, N.Y., 43, 44-45,

50-51, 57, 86, 90, 138, 154,

162
New York State, 8, 32, 69, 84,

99, 107, 108, 111, 120, 123,

127, 150, 184
Niantic, Conn., 130
Norfolk, Conn., 14-18, 126
North, Henry, 118
North Carolina, 130, 183
North Guilford, Conn., 116,

117
North Stonington, Conn., 130,

131
Northampton, Mass., 164, 171,

172, 173
Norton, John T., 60-61, 167
Nor walk, Conn., 35, 36, 121
Norwich, Conn., 13, 35, 46, 59,

63, 99, 104-105, 130, 131,

132, 181, 182, 187

Ohio, 5, 7, 84, 96, 135

Ohio River, 107

Old Lyme, Conn., 130, 137,

138, 140
Old Saybrook, Conn., 137, 140
Ontario, Lake, 120
Osgood, Reverend Samuel, 57,

58, 172

Paine, Thomas, 12

Parish, Dr. , 62

Pearl, Phillips, 41, 134

Pease, , 17

Pegg (slave), 151
Pembroke, Jim, see Penning-
ton, James W. C.

Pendleton, , 71, 75

Pennington, Reverend James

W. C, 64, 145-148, 167
Pennsylvania, 50, 85, 96, 107,

119, 123
Perkins, Frances, 117-118
Perkins, Reverend George W.,

62, 82-83, 101, 117-118
Perry, Charles, 129
Perry, Harvey, 129-130, 131
Petersburg, Va., 49
Pettibone, Amos, 126

Phelps, (Canaan), 15, 16

Phelps, (Farmington),

165
Phelps, Reverend Amos, 166
Philadelphia, Pa., 5, 6, 28, 32,

50, 52, 55, 108, 119, 145, 146
Phill (fugitive), 19
Philleo, Reverend Calvin, 34
Phillips, Wendell, 4
Pierce, President Franklin, 176
Pillsbury, Parker, 125-126
Pittsfield, Mass., 12, 127
Plainfield, Conn., 30, 63, 132,

133
Piatt, Daniel, 123
Piatt, Orville H., 124
Plymouth, Conn., 115, 122
Pomfret, Conn., 134
Pond, DeWitt C, 118
Porter, Dr. Noah, 146, 166-

167
Porter, Timothy, 122

Potter, , 46

Price, Doit, 63

260

INDEX

Providence, R.I., 32, 128-129
Puerto Principe, Cuba, 67
Putnam, Conn., 135

Quincy, 111., 159-160
Quinebaug River, 136

Rappahannock River, 49
Ray, Reverend Charles B., 120,

154
Raymond, Reverend William,

80
Read, George, 51-52, 114, 140

Redfield, , 51

Ree, I. W. M., 158

Reeve, Judge Tapping, 18, 46

Rhett, Robert B., 4

Rhode Island, 85, 107, 128-

129, 173, 181
Richards, Thomas, 11
Richmond, Va., 48
Rio Grande, 93-94
Ripley, Ohio, 5
Roberts, Gerardus, 123
Rocky Hill, Conn., 141, 159
Rodgers, J. H., 126
Roland, Levi P., 133
Ruggles, David, 57
Ruiz, Jose, 66, 67, 69, 72, 74
Rust, Richard S., 158
Rutland, Vt., 127

Sabin, Charles, 123

Sag Harbor, N.Y., 68

St. Lawrence River, 8, 164

Salisbury, Conn., 18

Saltonstall, Governor, 11

Sarah, 81

Savannah, 43

Sawyer, Mrs. Leicester, 110

Saybrook, Conn., 88-90
Scotland, 148
Scott, Dred, 178-181, 182
Sheldon, Joseph, 181, 185
Shetucket River, 131
Sierra Leone, 65, 69, 80
Silliman, Benjamin, 177
Silvia (slave), 151

Simpson, , 56—57

Simsbury, Conn., 170, 171

Skinner, Dr. H., 136

Smith, Hancy Z., 21

Smith, Hannah, 139-140

Smith, Harrison, 51

Smith, James Lindsey, 52-59,

88-90, 104-105, 131-132,

138, 140, 144, 172, 187
Smith, Truman, 143
Somers, Conn., 21
South Carolina, 14, 40, 48, 49,

108, 135, 169
Southington, Conn., 46, 115-

116
Springfield, Mass., 10, 12, 57,

59, 172-173
Stamford, Conn., 14, 120-121

Stanley, , 118

"Stanley Quarters," 118
Stanton, Reverend R. P., 182
Starr, Christopher, 46
Steele, James, 80

Stevens, , 51

Stiles, Ezra, 21
Stockbridge, Mass., 127
Stocking, Joseph, 151
Stocking, J. M., 122
Stonington, Conn., 46
Story, Justice Joseph, 76, 77
Stowe, Harriet Be.echer, 142,

143

INDEX

261

Street, Samuel, 163
Suffield, Conn., 18, 171
Sumner, Charles, 176

Tami, 65, 80, 166

Taney, Chief Justice Roger B.,

179
Tappan, Lewis, 69, 74, 77, 78
Taylor, N. W., 96
Texas, 9, 94, 176
Thames River, 131
Thayer, Augustine, 123
Thayer, Eli, 177
Thomas, Marvin, 141
Thomas, Thomas, 172
Thompson, — — (Canaan), 15,

16, 17-18, 126
Thompson, (Savannah),

47
Thompson, "Barber," 109
Thompson, George, 160, 161
Thompson, Jane, 170
Thompson, Maria, 170
Thompson, Justice Smith, 70
Tilghman, Frisbie, 147, 148
Titus (fugitive), 19
Torrington, Conn., 35, 124-

125, 176
Townsend, Amos, 111
Trowbridge, Thomas R., 181
Troy, N.Y., 127
Tubman, Harriet, 8
Turner, J., 131
Turner, Nat, 3, 5
Tuttle, Uriel, 124-125

Utah, 94-95

Uxbridge, Mass., 39, 134-136

-, 124

Vaill, Dr.

Valley Falls, R.I., 129

Van Buren, President Martin,

71
Vermont, 22, 120, 127, 129,

136, 173
Victoria, Queen, 62
Virginia, 3, 4, 15, 17, 48, 52,

96, 104, 119, 168

"W.W.," 145

Wads worth, Elizabeth, 163
Wadsworth, Joseph, 11
Wakeman, William, 121-122,

162
Wallingford, Conn., 163

Walter, , 17

Warner, Charles Dudley, 143
Warner, Judge Ely, 51, 52,

114, 140
Warner, Jonathan, 52, 114, 140
Warner, Richard, 158
Washington, Conn., 123-124
Washington, D.C., 23, 49, 69,

95
Washington, George, 5
Waterbury, Conn., 88, 122, 186
Waterford, Conn., 130
Watertown, Conn., 100
Webb, Ambrose, 51
Webster, Daniel, 94, 175

Weed, , 121

Weld, Theodore, 39, 41, 84,

131, 136
Wesley, John, 157
Wesleyan University, 37, 150,

152, 153, 154-155
Westbrook, Conn., 140
Westerley, R.I., 130, 173, 181
Westfield, Mass., 171, 172,

173
West Indies, 66, 156

262

INDEX

Westmoreland County, Va., 48
Wethersfield, Conn., 10, 141,

159
Wetmore, Chauncey, 158

Whitcomb, , 134

Whitmore, Reverend Zolva,

116-117
Whittlesey, David, 118
Wilbraham, Mass., 12, 59
Williams, Arthur, 169
Williams, Austin F., 78, 167
Williams, Roger, 128
Willimantic, Conn., 132, 133,

134, 136
Williston, J. P., 173
Wilmington, N.C., 183
Wilson, William, 173
Wilton, Conn., 121-122, 162,

168
Winchester, Conn., 125-126
Windham County, Conn., 133,

181, 184
Windsor, Conn., 171
Winsted, Conn., 125-126

Winters, Billy, 48-52, 59, 104,

140
Winthrop, Conn., 51
Wolcott, Sam, 10
Wolcottville, Conn., 124
Woodbridge, Theophilus, 151
Woodstock, Conn., 159

Woodward, , 158

Woolman, John, 12
Worcester, Mass., 39, 129, 134,

135, 136, 173
Work, Alanson, 159-161
Work, Henry Clay, 159
Worthington Grove, Mass., 172
Wyllys, George, 151

Yale, Levi, 117

Yale College, 21, 29, 30, 46,

69, 96, 113, 146, 177
Yantic River, 131
Young, , 129

Zip (fugitive), 53, 55

*r

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